A New Kind of Pilot Suicide [S2Ep29 video]

The captain of Air India 171 devised a brilliant but awful new way to commit mass murder

As the facts have emerged in the case of Air India 171, which crashed while taking off from Ahmedabad, India on June 12, it’s become increasingly clear that in all probability it was a case of mass murder suicide on the part of the captain. Mass murder suicide by pilot is a rare phenomenon, but until now they have all followed a certain pattern. Air India does not fit that pattern. In today’s episode, I make the case that the plane’s captain figured out a way to kill himself that is faster, easier, and more difficult to thwart. I fear that other suicidally minded airline pilots might be inspired to copy him, putting the flying public at risk.

Later in the episode I talk with Dr Alpo Vuorio of the University of Helsinki, who co-authored a 2023 paper about the phenomenon of pilot murder-suicid in the journal "Safety" entitled "Commercial Aircraft-Assisted Suicide Accident Investigations Re-Visited—Agreeing to Disagree?"

OK, so why might we suspect that Air India 171 could be suicide?

Really quickly, let’s review the final moments of the flight.

The Boeing 787 began its takeoff roll at 1:37 p.m. The first officer, 32-year-old Clive Kunder, was at the flight controls in the cockpit’s right seat with the captain, 56-year-old Sumeet Sabharwal, sitting to his left. Assuming that they were following normal procedure, Sabharwal would have been keeping his right hand on the throttle levers, ready to pull the engines to idle if he felt he needed to abort the takeoff.

The initial part of the takeoff roll went smoothly, and at 1:38:33 the aircraft reached 176 mph at a point of the flight known as “V1”: the last opportunity the flight crew has to bring the plane safely to a stop before the end of the runway. Past V1, if anything goes wrong, the flight crew has to keep flying the plane as best they can, no matter what. So when that happens, it is customary for the captain to move his hand away from the throttle.

Two seconds later, the plane reached its takeoff speed of 178 miles per hour; four seconds after that, it lifted off the runway. Three seconds later, someone flipped the fuel cutoff switch for one of the engines, then one second later they flipped the switch for the other one. Both engines began to lose thrust as their fuel ceased to flow into their combustion chambers.

At this point the first officer asked the captain why he had cut off the fuel. The captain denied having done so. Ten seconds later, someone moved the fuel switches back to the “run” position.

The fuel began to flow, and the engines reignited. One began to generate increasing thrust, but it was not enough to stop the descent of the plane.

Five seconds after 1:39 p.m., just 30 seconds after takeoff, one of the pilots called “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” Two seconds later, the black boxes stopped recording as the plane crashed in a fireball.

While the report declined to speculate as to whether the fuel switches could have been flipped accidentally, many pilots say that this would have been virtually impossible. After V1, neither pilot is supposed to have a hand on the throttle, so an unexpected jolt should not have been able to cause their hand to accidentally hit the switches.

Also, the switches are designed in such a way that in order to move one from one position to the other, a person has to first pull it out. An accidental lateral shove by itself is not enough to cause it to move. What’s more, the switches are protected by triangular metal guards to prevent them from being accidentally hit.

The timing is also suspicious. The shutoff occurred just seconds after recovery from engine loss became impossible. The fact that the fuel cutoff switches were moved one second apart indicates that they had not simply been bumped in a single, unintentional act. Given all these facts, some aviation experts have concluded that one of the pilots must have shut off the engines’ fuel intentionally.

OK, so to reach the conclusion that this crash was deliberately caused by one of the pilots is a bit of a barn burner in itself. This was not a mechanical failure, this was not human error, this is someone deliberately deciding to kill himself and his passengers and crew, and that is stunning in and of itself.

But there is something else, another level of incredible, if you will. And this is that the way he does it is unprecendented.

Why?

Because every other known case of pilot suicide, the pilot who did it initiated the incident at altitude, and either manually dived the plane into the ground by pushing forward on the controls or set the autopilot to crash the plane. Either way, it takes a certain amount of time to effectuate the process, during which the passengers or other crew might try to stop you. I would imagine it must be pretty demotivating to contemplate going through all that if you are suicidally contemplating murdering all your passengers and crew.

What Sabarwhal did was much quicker and efficient. There was no fighting, no fussing, no prolonged descent into oblivion. He waited until the plane passed V1, waited a few more seconds until the wheels had lifted off the ground, and flip, flip. He doomed himself and everyone aboard the plane and there was nothing anyone can do about. The plane was too low, too slow and too heavy; it would take too long for the engines to spool up. They are all dead men walking from the instant he cut off the fuel. Mission accomplished with the slightest flick, flick of two switches.

That to me is chilling to the bone, but it is also kind of genius. Sabarwhal has invented a better way (from the perp’s perspective) to commit mass-murder suicide.

To be clear, the investigation is still ongoing, and the Indian authorities haven’t yet officially concluded that the accident resulted from suicide. But until they do, I don’t think it’s too early to start processing the possible implications of another mass murder suicide, and thinking about what we can do about it. Based on what has happened in the past, anyone who is thinking of carrying out an act like this is going to study the crashes of the past, and the disturbing brilliance of the Air India 171 method is going to stand out clearly.

What I’m trying to say is that I fear that other people might sooner or later try to emulate what was done on June 12, and there will be even less chance that anyone will be able to stop them.

That’s a dark note to end on, but I fear that is the sobering reality that we live in, and if things are taking a dark turn, it’s better to at least acknowledge it.