Air India will resume some international flights in August following the fatal crash of flight AI171 in Ahmedabad last month.On Tuesday (15 July), the airline announced the “partial restoration” of schedules that were reduced during a “safety pause”.

A new report suggests the co-pilot officer on the doomed Air India flight thought the captain may have turned off the plane’s fuel switches shortly before the fatal crash.

According to a report published on Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal quoting sources close to United States officials’ early assessment of evidence, the black box audio recording of the last conversation between the two pilots indicates that the captain might have turned off the switches controlling the flow of fuel to the plane’s engines.

The first officer who was flying the Boeing 787 Dreamliner asked the other captain, who was more experienced, why he moved the switches to the 'cutoff' position after it climbed off the runway

The response came after a Wall Street Journal report claimed that cockpit audio from the ill-fated flight allegedly indicated the captain had manually cut off the fuel supply to the engines. The AAIB has taken serious exception to such claims being reported as fact while the investigation is still underway.

The crew reported a fault with the stabilizer to engineers in Ahmedabad who fixed it, according to a preliminary report into the investigation released on July 12