Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, was the captain on the flight, while Clive Kunder, 32, was the co-pilot who was flying the plane. Together, the two pilots had more than 19,000 hours of flight experience - nearly half of it on the Boeing 787. Both had passed all pre-flight health checks before the crash.

The administration said, with a ‘high level of confidence’, that AI-171 did not crash due to a mechanical issue or ‘inadvertent movement’ of fuel control unit or switches.