As investigators prepare an update on the Air India 171 crash, Pushkar Raj Sabharwal tells the BBC he is defending his son's name against anonymous source framing the lead investigator publicly criticised as irresponsible.
Pushkar Raj Sabharwal is in his 90s and spent decades inside aviation safety, which is why the question of who gets blamed when a plane goes down is not abstract to him. Speaking to the BBC two days before the AAIB is expected to release an update on the Air India crash that killed 260 people, the retired safety officer framed his son's case in terms that cut across grief. "He is no more, but I have to protect his reputation," he said. "Every time an accident takes place, the pilot is blamed. Why? It's the simplest way to close the chapter. He is no more and cannot defend himself."
His son, Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, was the monitoring pilot on Air India Flight 171 when the Boeing 787-8 crashed about 32 seconds after take-off from Ahmedabad on 12 June 2025, bound for London Gatwick. First Officer Clive Kunder, 32, was flying the aircraft. Both had passed pre-flight health checks. Investigators have not assigned fault or intent to either pilot, and the captain's father is now publicly pushing back against a specific reputational claim: that the senior pilot is the one the evidence is pointing toward.
That claim has its roots in reporting by the Wall Street Journal and Reuters on 19 July 2025, which cited unnamed sources saying new details were shifting focus to the senior pilot. Italy's Corriere della Sera carried a similar framing. Within days, India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, the lead investigator, publicly criticised the coverage as "selective and unverified reporting" and "irresponsible" while the investigation remained open. US National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy called the leak-driven coverage "premature and speculative" on X. The Indian Commercial Pilots' Association described the rush to blame as "reckless" and "deeply insensitive," while the head of Airline Pilots' Association of India, Sam Thomas, said "speculation has triumphed over transparency."
What the cockpit voice recorder actually captured, on the public record from the AAIB preliminary report, is narrower than the framing that followed. Both fuel-control switches transitioned from "run" to "cut-off" within seconds of take-off, starving both engines of fuel. The switches were returned to "run," triggering an engine relight, but only one engine was regaining thrust at impact. One pilot can be heard asking the other why he had "cut-off." The other replies that he had not. The report does not identify which pilot spoke which line, and investigators have not linked either pilot to the action.
The institutional weight behind the captain's defence extends well beyond the family. Air India CEO Campbell Wilson, speaking at the Aviation India 2025 summit in late October, said the preliminary findings "indicated that there was nothing wrong with the aircraft, the engines or the operation of the airline." The Indian Supreme Court, in a ruling referenced in November 2025, said "nobody can blame" the senior pilot and that there was "no suggestion of his fault in the initial report." The father had petitioned for an independent investigation into all possible causes.
Pushkar Raj Sabharwal is not denying the investigation. He is responding to media attribution that he says has hardened into a public conclusion in the year since his son died. Captain Sabharwal was reportedly planning to retire soon to care for his elderly father. The last call between them, his father has said, was routine: "I'm boarding the aircraft and I'll call you from Gatwick."
What comes next is the AAIB update, expected within days as of the BBC's reporting. What it contains, and whether it further narrows the open question of cause, is not yet known. The line between established fact and reporting the lead investigator himself has called irresponsible is the line Captain Sabharwal's father is asking the public to keep clear until then.