The captain of Air India Flight 171, which crashed in Ahmedabad killing 241 people on board last month, entrusted his first officer with the plane before takeoff, sources have claimed, citing the black boxes recovered from the crash.
‘The plane is in your hands,’ Captain Sumeet Sabharwal told First Officer Clive Kunder, two Western sources familiar with the contents of the recordings told Corriere della Sera.
The sources told the outlet it was not unusual for the first officer to manage takeoff. But it would have given the captain an opportunity to operate ‘undisturbed’, three consulted pilots said.
