When Air India 171 crashed, a pilot friend said to me , “wait and see, the easiest thing to do is to blame a dead pilot. The stakes for Boeing are too high for anything else to come out”. At the time I argued that the truth had to come out, it was not about air India, or India alone but the safety of passengers globally. Now that I see the leaks in the media in the last two days - air currents, WSJ - on fuel switches, in a likely bid to blame the pilots and avoid the root cause - which is an honest conversation about the safety of the plane, I am way more sceptical that we will ever know the actual facts. How many of you know that on 7th July, a United 787 ( same plane as crashed) turned back to Newark after it had taken off citing a mid air mechanical failure ? There are countless such examples from the last few years involving the 787 Dreamliner The media leaks have, rather vaguely, focused on fuel switches being turned off (and then on ) by Captain Sumeet and Captain Clive. Every single expert I’ve spoken to on and off record are making the following points- 1. Photos from the crash site reportedly show the fuel switches were found in the ON position, indicating that any movement of these switches would have been part of a recovery attempt of engines and not the cause of their failure 2. Incase of dual engine flame out the BOEING manual requires the pilots to cut the fuel switch and run them again to try and reset the engines - in other words if the fuel switches were cut and run again it’s what the pilots are required to do as per training not an indication of any error 3. If there was a complete and total electric failure ( said to be a rarer event than even two engines failing ) there is no clear demonstrable response to this in the Boeing training module say sources . The pilots would have had to basically improvise in the 20 seconds they had at low altitude . - this would be a highly abnormal scenario with no boeing checklist for total electric failure in conjunction with dual engine loss as per pilots I’ve spoken to 4. The RAT ( RAM air turbine ) auto deploys when both engines flame out . If even that failed to provided electrical back up and hydraulic power it points to a possible catastrophic systems failure and not pilot error These are technical details for a general audience. But the important thing for us as laypeople is to ask whether it’s too convenient to have selective half whispers against two dead pilots with under 30 seconds to react, rather than raise tough questions about a company whose own CEO has admitted before the U.S. Congress to serious safety lapses. The sooner the investigation report is made public the better. But the media leaks ( neither with much meat or substantiation) makes you wonder whether the report will leave all of us with more questions than answers about the safety of the 787 aircraft itself - Do remember that after the 737 max incidents Boeing tried to blame the pilots ( one was an Indian ) before eventually conceding its own design errors and issuing interim directives till they could fix these. Also remember this isn’t just a news story. Flying - and safety - impact us all. It may be easy to try and bury some of these unanswered questions under the convenient and unfair headline of pilot actions. But as you think of Capt Sumeet with less than 20 seconds to react and the behemoth that is Boeing with its spotty track record, ask yourself if the root cause is being addressed at all/ is the 787, a highly electric plane, truly safe ? 1200 of them are deployed world wide For more perspectives , our show here youtube.com/live/HuyKnjNG1Xk…