MUMBAI, June 20 -- More than a year after the ill-fated Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner bound for London crashed in Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025, just 32 seconds after take-off, killing 260 people (241 onboard and 19 on the ground), the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) on Friday demanded a transparent judicial probe into the tragedy, saying technical evidence raises serious questions over the theory of pilot error. Addressing a press conference in Mumbai, FIP president Captain C S Randhawa said justice must be ensured for the passengers, crew members and their families, while expressing serious reservations over the ongoing investigation. Randhawa said the pilots' body has already approached the Supreme Court seeking an independent and transparent inquiry. According to the FIP, independent technical material and certified simulator testing indicate the possibility of a major aircraft system, electrical or technical failure that must be thoroughly examined before attributing blame to the deceased pilots. The federation said certified simulator tests conducted under the supervision of attorney Mike Andrews of the Beasley Allen Law Firm have cast doubt on the timeline outlined in the preliminary report. According to FIP, the report suggests the aircraft's hydraulic system became active around four seconds after the engine shutdown sequence at 08:08:43. However, the pilots' body said 10 independent runs on an EASA-certified Boeing 787 Level D six-axis simulator showed that the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) requires 18 seconds to deploy and generate hydraulic pressure. It said 12 seconds are needed for the high-bypass turbofan engines to spool below flight idle and another six seconds for the mechanical RAT deployment mechanism, as described in Hamilton Sundstrand technical training documents, to restore hydraulic power. FIP said the discrepancy warrants a transparent simulator validation exercise and rejected any premature conclusion that the pilots deliberately moved the fuel control switches to the "cut-off" position, noting that the preliminary report used the term "transitioned" rather than definitively stating that the switches were manually manipulated by the crew. The federation also referred to an official whistleblower audit that allegedly recorded over 357 adverse safety findings on Air India aircraft, claiming seven out of 10 airframes suffered repeated snags. It said any history of unresolved technical defects must be scrutinised. FIP also demanded that all crash evidence, including aircraft health-monitoring data, cockpit information, black box recordings and witness accounts, be fully disclosed. It also pointed to reports of abnormal sounds and electrical disturbances before the crash....