On June 12, Air India Flight 171 — a Boeing 787 Dreamliner bound from Ahmedabad to London — suffered a catastrophic failure just seconds after takeoff from Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. Weather was clear. Visibility was perfect. Yet within one minute, the aircraft went from a normal climb to a powerless glide.

The Collapse in 60 Seconds

At 2,000 feet, both engines suddenly lost thrust. The cockpit voice recorder captured no panic, just stunned silence. The flight data showed both fuel control switches — which require a guarded three-step motion to move — were in the cutoff position. Seconds later, the Ram Air Turbine deployed, a sign of total electrical loss.

By 30 seconds after liftoff, both engines were offline. Hydraulics faded. The crew attempted to turn back, but the aircraft stalled and entered a fatal descent.

The Impossible Switches

Under normal conditions, both fuel switches moving to cutoff in less than a second is virtually impossible without deliberate action — or a system telling them to. Neither pilot had called for such a move. Maintenance logs showed no mechanical or electrical red flags before the flight.

A Ghost Command

Investigators now believe the engines shut down not because the pilots moved the switches, but because the Electronic Engine Control (EEC) system — the Dreamliner’s digital “brain” — misread inputs. A short circuit, software glitch, or “ghost signal” may have convinced the EEC that the pilots had commanded a shutdown.

In other words, the plane may have overruled its own crew.

Boeing’s Troubling Gaps

Internal Boeing audits have revealed skipped software updates, incomplete testing, and outdated EEC firmware on Flight 171 that lacked a patch designed to prevent signal misreads during vibration-heavy takeoffs. Production pressures, outsourcing, and poor update tracking created a chain of vulnerabilities stretching back years.

No Time to Recover

Even after the crew reset the switches to “run,” jet engines need 10–15 seconds to restart — time the pilots didn’t have at low altitude. The left engine began to recover seconds before impact; the right reached full power too late. Analysts estimate that just four more seconds could have allowed a safe emergency landing.

Industry Reckoning

The crash has triggered global inspections of Dreamliner EEC systems, a push for manual engine overrides, and new pilot training for “automation confusion” scenarios. Engineers are exploring AI-powered watchdog software to detect and warn crews of mismatched or corrupted signals in real time.

Flight 171’s legacy may be a hard truth for modern aviation: in a cockpit full of smart technology, pilots must remain the final authority — and the systems meant to help them must never ignore their commands.