Indian regulator says grounded Air India plane’s fuel switches passed checks

NEW DELHI: India’s aviation regulator said on Tuesday that checks on the fuel switches of a grounded Air India Dreamliner jet found them to be satisfactory, after a pilot reported a possible defect with the mechanism on one of the long-haul jets.

Fuel switches were at the centre of last year’s crash involving an Air India Dreamliner, which killed 260 people in Gujarat state and triggered tighter scrutiny of the airline. The switches regulate the flow of jet fuel into a plane’s engines.

Air India said on Monday it had grounded a Boeing Dreamliner after a pilot reported a possible defect with the fuel control switch on the plane, which was set to operate between London and Bengaluru.

During engine start in London, the switch failed to remain latched under light vertical pressure on two occasions before latching correctly on a third attempt, the regulator said in a statement on Tuesday.

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However, it added “the pull-to-unlock force was checked on the fuel control switch using the recommended procedure … (and) found within limits.”

The regulator has told Air India to circulate among pilots the procedure recommended by Boeing for operating the switches. Air India, owned by Tata Group and Singapore Airlines, had earlier begun checking fuel switches on its fleet of Dreamliners after the pilot’s report but had not found any problems so far, according to an internal memo reviewed by Reuters.

Air India has 33 Dreamliners, according to Flightradar24.

The airline’s engineering team had earlier escalated the matter to Boeing for “priority evaluation” after the potential switch defect came to light, according to the memo by Manish Uppal, Air India’s head of flight operations.

An Air India spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.