Aviation expert Mike Andrews – who is who is representing more than 90 victims, including some of the 52 Brits who died in the disaster – claims a water leak may explain a catastrophic loss of power to the engines
The doomed Air India crash which killed 260 passengers may have been caused by a water leak, a victims’ attorney claims.
US attorney Mike Andrews – who is representing more than 90 victims including some of the 52 Brits who died in the disaster – claimed Capt Sumeet Sabharwal, 55, and co-pilot Clive Kunder, 32, had been wrongly blamed for the deadly crash. An initial report suggested the Boeing 787 Dreamliner plunged to the ground next to Ahmedabad airport shortly after take-off because Sabharwal flipped off a fuel switch.
But Mr Andrews said there was not enough evidence to say the crash was due to pilot error. Instead he claimed a faulty portable water system – highlighted by the Federal Aviation Administration a month before the June 12 disaster – in the toilets may have “shorted” the electrics and cut power to the engines.
Today, in an exclusive interview with the Mirror, he revealed FOUR whistleblowers had come forward to give vital clues about “technical and engineering” problems that may have caused the crash. And he said he was weighing up a compensation claim in the US courts against manufacturer Boeing which could stretch to millions.
Mr Andrews also said he had met with British national Vishwash Ramesh, 40, from Leicester, who was sitting in seat 11A and was the only passenger to survive.
Mr Andrews, who works with law firm Beasley Allen, said: “Anyone at this point who does not have all of the data and would seek to blame the pilots is speculating and that’s not fair. That’s not fair to the victims and that’s not fair to the pilots’ families, because they’re also victims, particularly if it’s shown that there was a technical issue and then they are entirely blameless.
“To me that makes it worse. Because if you’ve tried to craft or perpetuate some narrative that the pilots are at fault, when you truly don’t know, or if you know there are water leaks that can cause this and you still perpetuate that narrative, that heightens the culpability to me.”
A preliminary crash report reveals one of the two pilots – referring to the fuel switch – said: “Why did you cut off?” The second insisted: “I did not do so.” But Mr Andrews said only a small portion of the flight recorder and black box data had been recovered and analysed.
He has filed a Freedom of Information claim in the US to obtain the findings of a probe that would give answers to his clients. But Mr Andrews said: “We need that data. Everyone deserves these answers. Otherwise it’s just truly a shot in the dark. It’s a guess and unfairly blames someone when you know there could be so many other potential causes here.”
Mr Andrews has just returned from visiting clients in the Indian locations of Surat, Diu, Vadodara, Mumbai and Ahmedabad. He visited the crash site before meeting families in the UK. Referring to his meeting with Mr Ramesh – whose brother, Nayan Kumar Ramesh, 27, was killed – Mr Andrews said: “Mr Ramesh is not only a survivor, he is a victim. He lost his brother and his family is suffering enormously in a horrible way. From what I can ascertain, they are a very hardworking family and they deserve representation and answers. They are the last folks who ever thought that anything like this would happen to them.”
Imtiyaz Ali Syed’s brother Javed Syed, 37, a hotel manager from west London, died with his wife Mariam, 35, and their children Zayn, six, and Amani, four. The children were among the youngest to die in the worst single-aircraft disaster in Indian aviation history. The family, who lived in west London, had been in India on a long-awaited Eid holiday to spend time with Javed’s ailing mother.
Javed, who worked at the Best Western Kensington Olympia, is said to have moved to the UK 11 years ago where he met Mariam, a brand ambassador at Harrods, and became a British citizen. Imtiyaz told how he travelled to Ahmedabad to identify the bodies and submit DNA samples. He said: “We hadn’t seen them in years. They came after so long and we lost them all. We still can’t believe it. They couldn’t get a direct flight to London from Mumbai, so they travelled to Ahmebadad to board Air India’s AI-171. That decision has destroyed us.”
Mr Andrews added: “In the end, this all comes down to the families. This tragedy has affected every possible socioeconomic group and age group across every level of society. We represent, for example, a family of a young boy aged 14 who was helping to support his family by selling tea on foot, walking around the medical hospital.
“His family depended on him. He had a thermos of hot tea and cups, and he would walk around for pennies and sell cups of tea. And so he had stopped to take a nap under one of those trees. The plane crashed into the building and pieces of it fell and killed him. We want transparency, because you cannot get accountability, you cannot get to any of these other subsequent questions until you know what happened.”
In May the FAA ordered inspections on select Boeing 787s “prompted by reports of potable‑water‑system leaks”. Operators were told to check missing or damaged sealants that “allowed water to seep into electronics equipment bays, risking electrical shorts and potential loss of critical flight systems”.
Flight bosses were mandated to carry out the inspections by June 18 – six days after the crash. Mr Andrews believes this may have been the cause of the Air India crash because an initial probe found the plane’s emergency power system had been deployed, a ram air turbine or RAT.
He said: “I think this case highlights the fact that aviation safety affects everyone, whether you’re a passenger on the plane or not. Individuals who were going about their day, did not buy a plane ticket, working at working at a medical college. There were individuals who were driving scooters on the street. We represent one of those families, folks who were there, renewing licenses and government IDs, all affected by a tragedy related to aviation safety, and so that’s just, it underscores to me the importance for corporate governance, transparency, and aviation safety.”
Mr Andrews’ allegations were put to Boeing but no comment was provided.
