DGCA Orders Airlines To Inspect Fuel Switch Locks On Boeing Planes By July 21

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has ordered airlines to inspect fuel switches on Boeing aircraft, including the 787 and 737 models by July 21.

"Strict adherence to the timeline is essential to ensure continued airworthiness and safety of operations," the aviation safety regulator said in an order on Monday.

The DGCA order came hours after NDTV Profit had reported that mandatory fuel switch lock checks on Boeing 787 aircraft are underway following the recent crash of an Air India plane on June 12.

A DGCA official confirmed that the latest order applies only to airlines which own these planes and not those who operate leased Boeing planes.

Air India and Air India Express will have to inspect about 33 Boeing 787s and 75 narrow-body 737 aircraft within a week and submit a report to the DGCA. Indigo, too, has seven B737 Max 8 and one B787-9 in its fleet but all of these are leased and therefore not affected by DGCA's directive.

The latest order follows a preliminary report of the AI 171 crash last month, which referenced a 2018 advisory by the US aviation body, Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA had warned of a potential malfunction of the fuel control switches in a few Boeing models such as the 737s, a smaller model of Boeing aircraft. It recommended airlines to inspect the locking mechanism of the fuel switches of all Boeing models, including the 787, in order to ensure they could not be moved inadvertently. However, the FAA doesn't consider the issue to be an "unsafe condition" that would warrant a directive on any Boeing airplane models at this moment.

Air India, according to the report, didn't carry out any inspection following the advisory as it was not mandatory at that time.

With the latest DGCA order, however, the airlines will have to mandatorily inspect specific Boeing models for potential issues.

However, the Tata Group airline told investigators that it has replaced a critical cockpit module housing the fuel control switches twice — in 2019 and 2023 — on the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner that crashed last month even as the reason for the replacement was not linked to the fuel control switch.

Notably, major foreign airlines including Etihad Airways, and Singapore Airlines have already begun checking the locking mechanism in the fuel switches of their Boeing 787 fleet. South Korea, meanwhile, was also preparing to mandate inspections of fuel control switches on all Boeing aircraft. A spokesperson for the South Korean transport ministry said that the upcoming checks would follow the guidance of the 2018 FAA advisory. Though no specific timeline for completion of these checks was provided.