A recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report has shed new light on the possible causes of the Air India crash in Ahmedabad last month, which resulted in the deaths of 260 people. The report, citing individuals familiar with the early assessments of U.S. investigators, indicates that the captain may have turned off the fuel supply to the aircraft's engines shortly after takeoff.

The cockpit voice recording reportedly reveals a critical moment just after takeoff when the fuel supply to both engines was cut off. According to the WSJ, the recording suggests that the captain was the one who turned off the switches controlling the fuel flow to the engines. This action of switching off the fuel supply mid-climb has become a central focus of the investigation.

According to sources, the first officer questioned the captain as to why he had switched off the fuel flow as the plane took off and climbed. The first officer seemed shocked and then panicked, while the captain remained calm. The exchange between the two crew members, one experienced and composed, the other shocked and panicked, is likely to be crucial in understanding decision-making in the cockpit.

The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau's (AAIB) preliminary report mentioned that one pilot asked the other why the switches were moved, and the other denied doing so, leaving the identities ambiguous. However, sources cited by the WSJ suggest that details in the preliminary report also point to the captain as the one who turned off the switches. The report stopped short of concluding whether it was intentional or accidental.

The two fuel control switches on a Boeing 787 are located below the thrust levers. To change one from run to cutoff, a pilot has to first pull the switch up and then move it from run to cutoff or vice versa. According to the flight recorder, seconds after takeoff, the switches for both engines transitioned to 'cutoff' from 'run' one after another with a time gap of one second. As a result, the engines began to lose power.

Without fuel flowing to the engines, the plane began to lose thrust. After reaching a height of 650 feet, the plane began to sink. The fuel switches for both engines were turned back to run, and the airplane automatically tried restarting the engines. However, the plane was too low and too slow to recover. The plane clipped some trees and a chimney before crashing in a fireball into a building on a nearby medical college campus, killing 260 people.

The captain of the flight was Sumeet Sabharwal, who had decades of experience, while the copilot was Clive Kunder, who was relatively early in his career. Kunder would have most likely "had his hands full pulling back on the Dreamliner's controls" during takeoff, while Sabharwal, the one in charge of overseeing operations, "would have been more likely to have had his hands free".

The new findings may lead to a better understanding of how the tragic events unfolded.