UK asks Air India to explain Boeing Dreamliner fuel-switch incident

By Aditya Kalra and Abhijith Ganapavaram

NEW DELHI, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Britain's aviation authority has asked Air India to explain how a Boeing BA.N Dreamliner passenger jet which was grounded on arrival in India for safety checks took off from London on Sunday with a possibly faulty fuel switch, a letter shows.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), in a letter to the airline dated Tuesday, warned of the possibility of regulatory action against Air India and its Boeing 787 fleet if the airline does not submit a complete response within a week.

Air India said in a statement it had completed a precautionary re-inspection of the switches and found no issues, and would "respond to the UK regulator accordingly".

The CAA said in a statement that it was a standard process for a regulator to request details following "an aircraft incident and is in line with safety assurance procedures".

Fuel switches were at the centre of last year's crash involving an Air India Dreamliner, which killed 260 people in Gujarat state and triggered tighter scrutiny of the airline. The switches regulate the flow of jet fuel into a plane's engines.

Air India said on Monday it had grounded a Boeing BA.N Dreamliner after a pilot reported a possible "defect" with the fuel control switch on the plane on landing.

Boeing, which earlier said it was cooperating with Air India on the incident, did not respond to a request for comment.

UK REGULATOR SEEKS 'DETAILED' ACCOUNT

The Indian civil aviation watchdog later said that during the engine start in London, the crew observed the fuel control switch did not remain latched on the 'run' position on two occasions, but was stable on a third attempt.

The crew decided to continue on to India and the regulator's checks this week found the switches were functioning fine.

The CAA, however, told Air India that it must provide "a detailed account of all maintenance actions performed to ensure the continued airworthiness of the aircraft and to support its release to service for" Bengaluru.

ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS SOUGHT

The UK watchdog has also sought a "comprehensive root-cause analysis" of the incident and a "preventive action plan" to preclude a recurrence of similar events across Air India's Boeing 787 fleet, said the letter, which was not made public.

Air India in an internal memo on Wednesday said it had also checked the fuel switches on all of its Boeing 787s - which Flightradar24 says total 33 - and "no issues were found".