*

US officials have made early assessment of evidence

-source

*

First officer asked captain why he moved fuel switches and

to

return them to original position -source

*

Air India CEO noted preliminary report found no mechanical

or

maintenance faults

(Recasts with Reuters source, adds details from US NTSB)

By David Shepardson and Dan Catchpole

WASHINGTON/SEATTLE, July 17 (Reuters) - A cockpit

recording of dialogue between the two pilots of the Air India

flight that crashed last month supports the view that the

captain cut the flow of fuel to the plane's engines, said a

source briefed on U.S. officials' early assessment of evidence.

The first officer was at the controls of the Boeing

787 and asked the captain why he moved the fuel switches

into a position that starved the engines of fuel and requested

that he restore the fuel flow, the source told Reuters on

condition of anonymity because the matter remains under

investigation.

The U.S. assessment is not contained in a formal document,

said the source, who emphasized the cause of the June 12 crash

in Ahmedabad, India, that killed 260 people remains under

investigation.

There was no cockpit video recording definitively showing

which pilot flipped the switches, but the weight of evidence

from the conversation points to the captain, according to the

early assessment.

The Wall Street Journal first reported similar information

on Wednesday about the world's deadliest aviation accident in a

decade.

India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB),

which is leading the investigation into the crash, said in a

statement on Thursday that "certain sections of the

international media are repeatedly attempting to draw

conclusions through selective and unverified reporting." It

added the investigation was ongoing and it remained too early to

draw definitive conclusions.

Most air crashes are caused by multiple factors, and

under international rules, a final report is expected within a

year of an accident.

A preliminary report released by the AAIB on Saturday said

one pilot was heard on the cockpit voice recorder asking the

other why he cut off the fuel and "the other pilot responded

that he did not do so."

Investigators did not identify which remarks were made by

Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and which by First Officer Clive

Kunder, who had total flying experience of 15,638 hours and

3,403 hours, respectively.

The AAIB's preliminary report said the fuel switches had

switched from "run" to "cutoff" a second apart just after

takeoff, but it did not say how they were moved.

Almost immediately after the plane lifted off the ground,

closed-circuit TV footage showed a backup energy source called a

ram air turbine had deployed, indicating a loss of power from

the engines.

The London-bound plane began to lose thrust, and after

reaching a height of 650 feet, the jet started to sink.

The fuel switches for both engines were turned back to

"run", and the airplane automatically tried restarting the

engines, the report said.

But the plane was too low and too slow to be able to

recover, aviation safety expert John Nance told Reuters.

The plane clipped some trees and a chimney before crashing

in a fireball into a building on a nearby medical college

campus, the report said, killing 19 people on the ground and 241

of the 242 on board the 787.

NO SAFETY RECOMMENDATIONS

In an internal memo on Monday, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson

said the preliminary report found no mechanical or maintenance

faults and that all required maintenance had been carried out.

The AAIB's preliminary report had no safety recommendations

for Boeing ( BA ) or engine manufacturer GE.

After the report was released, the U.S. Federal Aviation

Administration and Boeing ( BA ) privately issued notifications that

the fuel switch locks on Boeing ( BA ) planes are safe, a document seen

by Reuters showed and four sources with knowledge of the matter

said.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has been

assisting with the Air India investigation and its Chair

Jennifer Homendy has been fully briefed on all aspects, a board

spokesperson said. That includes the cockpit voice recording and

details from the flight data recorder that the NTSB team

assisted the AAIB in reading out, the spokesperson added.

"The safety of international air travel depends on learning

as much as we can from these rare events so that industry and

regulators can improve aviation safety," Homendy said in a

statement. "And if there are no immediate safety issues

discovered, we need to know that as well."

The circumstantial evidence increasingly indicates that a

crew member flipped the engine fuel switches, Nance said, given

there was "no other rational explanation" that was consistent

with the information released to date.

Nonetheless, investigators "still have to dig into all the

factors" and rule out other possible contributing factors which

would take time, he said.

The Air India crash has rekindled debate over adding flight

deck cameras, known as cockpit image recorders, on

airliners.

Nance said investigators likely would have benefited

greatly from having video footage of the cockpit during the Air

India flight.