Air India Flight AI 171 was airborne for just 32 seconds on June 12 before disaster struck. But the key to unlocking what brought down Boeing Co.’s most advanced jetliner may lie in a chilling 10-second gap buried in the crash probe’s timeline.
Both Sumeet Sabharwal, the senior captain monitoring the flight, and Clive Kunder, the junior co-pilot who was flying, were found fit for work, having adequately rested and been cleared in a routine preflight breath analyzer test. The aircraft lifted off the tarmac at 8:08:39 coordinated universal time, or around 1:38 p.m. local time in Ahmedabad, for its journey to London.