A newly released preliminary report may finally shed light on what went wrong. Spoiler alert: it's great news for Boeing. Early findings suggest the mid-air disaster was not due to a mechanical flaw in the engines, but likely the result of human error.

The report does not explain why the switches were flipped and points to no mechanical issues or bird strike. It does, however, suggest a focus on the pilots' actions. The first officer was flying at the time.

As we've previously noted, this marks the first-ever hull loss of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner since the aircraft entered service in 2011.

At the Paris Air Show, one of the aerospace industry's biggest events, held about a week after the crash, Boeing kept a low profile while the investigation into Flight 171 was ongoing.

Shawn Pruchnicki, a former airline accident investigator and aviation expert at Ohio State University, told The New York Times: "For example, on the 787 and probably more airliners these days, the switches themselves — you can't shut them off without actually lifting them up. So there's a little mechanical gate built into the switch — you have to lift it up over this little gate. So you can't just bump it."

The good news for Boeing is that the investigation is pointing toward human error as the contributing factor in the crash.


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