top of page

By:

Divyaa Advaani 

2 November 2024 at 8:58:38 am

Your First Impression Is Delegated

A prospective partner called your office last week. You do not know his name. You were not told he called. The phone rang four times before it was answered, he was asked to repeat himself, and he was promised a callback that arrived two days later as a message with no greeting. He formed an opinion of you in under three minutes. You were not in the room, and you will never know that opinion existed. Most founders believe their personal brand begins when they walk into a meeting. It does not....

Your First Impression Is Delegated

A prospective partner called your office last week. You do not know his name. You were not told he called. The phone rang four times before it was answered, he was asked to repeat himself, and he was promised a callback that arrived two days later as a message with no greeting. He formed an opinion of you in under three minutes. You were not in the room, and you will never know that opinion existed. Most founders believe their personal brand begins when they walk into a meeting. It does not. It begins at the first point of contact, and in any business of real size, that point is almost never the founder. It is the assistant who manages your calendar. The sales executive who sends the first proposal. The person who handles your WhatsApp, the receptionist, the coordinator who confirms the meeting. These people speak for you every day, in your name, using your reputation, and most of them have never been told what that reputation is supposed to feel like. Many are loyal, hardworking and capable. That is not the issue. The issue is that nobody ever showed them what a first impression of this founder should feel like. Here is what a prospective client experiences. They do not separate you from your team. They cannot. To them, the speed of a reply is how seriously you take them. The tone of the first email is the tone of your leadership. A proposal with a spelling error, a late response, a careless "will check and let you know" becomes evidence about the person at the top. If this is how the organisation presents itself while trying to win my business, they reason, this is how it will treat me once I have signed. And they never tell you. They simply go quiet. The deal that stalls after a promising first call. The partner who becomes "busy". The client who chooses a competitor and offers a reason that has nothing to do with the real one. Across a year, that is every enquiry that stalled, every proposal left unanswered, every introduction that never became a meeting. This is a personal brand problem, not a staffing one. A founder can spend years refining how they present in a room and still lose the room before they enter it, because the impression was formed by someone else, in a conversation the founder was never part of and never heard about. The founders who avoid this are not the ones with the most polished staff. They are the ones who have made their brand legible to the people around them. Their team knows how the founder speaks, what the business stands for, what warmth looks like in a reply, how a delay should be explained and how a client should feel in the first thirty seconds. The team is not following a script. They are carrying a standard, because someone took the time to define it. When did you last experience your own business the way a stranger does? Not a test call arranged with your team's knowledge. A real one. Send a first enquiry from a number nobody recognises. Notice how long it takes to be answered, what the tone is, and whether you would want to do business with whoever replied. Then ask yourself honestly whether that person sounds like you, and whether you would be proud to be represented that way. If the answer is uncomfortable, it is worth acting on now. Every week of that experience is a week someone forms a verdict about you without your knowledge. Your personal brand is not only what you say. It is everything said on your behalf. If you have a suspicion about how your business is being experienced before you ever walk in, that suspicion deserves a direct, focused brand consultation, not a casual chat. Book yours here: https://www.calendly.com/divyaaadvaani/founder-brand-audit — Divyaa Advaani, Personal Branding Strategist (The author is a personal branding expert. She has clients from 14+ countries. Views personal.)

A pilot raises uncomfortable questions

Wing Commander Sharad Sharma
Jul 13, 2025
4 min read

Could the fuel switches have moved on their own? Could a short circuit or software glitch be the cause? Was there any unnoticed fault during maintenance or in the throttle control system? Could human error have played a role? Or was there a previously unknown issue with this aircraft model?

When Air India flight AI 171 lifted off from Ahmedabad on June 12, the skies were clear, the aircraft sound and the engines roaring. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner had just begun its journey to London when, barely airborne, it fell out of the sky. The crash killed 241 of the 242 people on board and 19 more on the ground. One passenger, miraculously, survived.

 

The government’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has released a preliminary report, which, although not final, provides some crucial early findings.

 

The aircraft was fully certified, recently maintained and cleared for the flight. There was no bad weather, no signs of a bird strike and no last-minute technical complaints that would explain what went wrong. So, what happened?

 

According to the flight recorder data, the aircraft began take-off normally. The engines were running at full power, and the aircraft lifted smoothly off the runway. It reached a speed of about 180 knots (roughly 333 km/h) and had already become airborne. Then, something extraordinary and highly unusual occurred.

 

Both engines shut down, not because of a fault or an external event but because the fuel supply to the engines was cut off. This happened within just a few seconds of take-off. The investigation found that both fuel control switches, which regulate fuel flow to the engines, were moved from “RUN” to “CUTOFF” within one second of each other. This action prevents fuel from reaching the engines, effectively shutting them down.

 

The mystery

Typically, these switches are only used at the beginning of a flight to activate the engines and at the end to turn them off. During mid-flight, they are never touched unless there’s a serious emergency that requires shutting down an engine, such as a fire. Even then, only one engine would be shut down, not both. The switches have a locking feature to prevent accidental movement. However, in this case, both switches were moved during the initial climb, just seconds after take-off. Why?

 

This is the central mystery the investigators seek to solve. If neither pilot intentionally moved the switches, how did they end up changing position? The cockpit voice recorder captured a surprised exchange between the pilots: one asked the other why he cut the fuel, and the other said he didn’t. This brief conversation suggests that neither of them intended to do so. It’s possible that a mechanical failure, an electrical problem, or some other unexplained anomaly caused the switches to move. But so far, there is no clear explanation.

 

Interestingly, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had previously issued a safety bulletin regarding the potential disengagement of the switch locking mechanism on some Boeing models. However, this bulletin was not mandatory, and Air India had not conducted any specific checks related to it. This may be relevant or not, but it indicates that this kind of issue was previously flagged, at least in theory.

 

After the switches were moved to the cutoff position, the engines immediately lost power. About ten seconds later, the switches were returned to “RUN” mode, likely by the pilots or automatically by the system. The left engine began to recover. The right engine also tried to restart but did so more slowly. By that point, the aircraft was too low and too slow to stay airborne.

 

Another sign of complete engine failure was the deployment of the Ram Air Turbine (RAT). This is a small wind-driven device that extends from the aircraft body to produce emergency hydraulic and electrical power when both engines fail. Its appearance confirmed that both engines were not generating power at that critical moment.

 

At 08:09 AM UTC, the pilot issued a “Mayday” distress call. Seconds later, the aircraft crashed into the hostel complex of BJ Medical College, just outside the airport. Investigators found pieces of the wings, engines, tail and landing gear scattered across six buildings. Despite the fire damage, the forward flight recorder survived, and its data has been downloaded with the help of US experts and equipment.

 

No action on Boeing

The crash investigators have not yet recommended any actions for the Boeing 787 or the GE engines. This indicates that no design flaw or known technical issue has been confirmed so far. The aircraft had proper certifications, was within weight limits, and carried no hazardous cargo. The pilots were well-rested and experienced. Nothing abnormal was recorded before take-off.

 

So, what are we left with? A plane in good condition. Good weather. A safe runway. A normal take-off. And then, a total loss of engine power after a sudden and unexplained interruption in fuel supply. The sequence happened too quickly for the pilots to take effective corrective action. And they seem just as confused in the last few seconds of the flight as everyone else is now.

 

This raises some uncomfortable questions. Could the fuel switches have moved on their own? Could a short circuit or software glitch be the cause? Was there any unnoticed fault during maintenance or in the throttle control system? Could human error have played a role? Or was there a previously unknown issue with this aircraft model?

 

Until the final report is released, we will not know for sure. Aircraft crash investigations are slow and careful. Every component, every millisecond of data, every line of cockpit conversation is being parsed. They need to be.

 

As an experienced professional, I encourage everyone to resist the urge to speculate, especially when the flight crew has been lost in the accident. As more details of the investigation become available, the potential cause of the crash will gradually come into focus. In aviation, jumping to conclusions too soon often causes confusion rather than clarity.

 

(The writer is a veteran pilot who served with the Indian Air Force and later flew for Jet Airways. Views personal.)

Comments

bottom of page