An Airbus dossier sent to Air India’s engineering team after the aircraft experienced a sudden 300-foot drop on August 4 corroborated the hydraulic and flight-control abnormalities reported during the incident.

(DFDR).

According to the Airbus document, at 4:02:44 GMT (9:32 a.m.

IST), the aircraft first recorded a loss of the hydraulic system.

This coincided with the loss of the left-hand elevator, or horizontal tail surface, which controls the aircraft’s nose-up and nose-down pitch, as well as hydraulic-powered surfaces on the main wings that control lift and drag and assist in the aircraft’s roll or tilt.

Air India CEO peeved at employees flouting rules, warns of consequences The very next second, the aircraft recorded failures of the remaining two hydraulic systems.

This resulted in a total loss of the hydraulic-powered control surfaces described above, including the elevator and the wing surfaces.

Airbus said that some of the aircraft's tail (elevator) and wing (ailerons) control surfaces were unavailable for around four seconds.

During this period, the aircraft pitched up.

The second autopilot then disconnected, and the First Officer applied nose-down control input, but Airbus said the aircraft’s control surfaces initially did not respond directly.

About five seconds later, the hydraulic systems began recovering one by one, restoring the aircraft’s flight-control surfaces and their ability to respond to pilot inputs.

These observations were part of Airbus’s inputs to Air India’s engineering team for troubleshooting the snags.

Not turbulence: Air India A320 suffered rare flight-control event before 300-foot altitude drop As many as 24 people onboard were injured in the incident.

The incident has since been categorised as a “serious incident” by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which is investigating it.

A three-member expert team from Airbus is in the country to examine the aircraft and its hydraulic systems.

Probe teams will examine whether these were snags, false negatives or events due to human intervention.

Meanwhile, sources said the pilot-in-command of the flight tested positive for marijuana.