Quoting the first paragraph of the
report at the Aviation Herald
An Air India Express Boeing 737-800, registration VT-AXJ performing flight IX-212 from Dubai (United Arab Emirates) to Pune (India) with 113 passengers, was enroute at FL370 at Mach 0.76 between waypoints PARAR and DOGET with autopilot A in CMD mode and autothrottle engaged. The captain decided to take a short break to visit the washroom and left the cockpit, however noticed the washroom was occupied and wanted to return to the cockpit, when he noticed the airplane was pitching down. He attempted to enter the cockpit, the cockpit door however did not open. He used the emergency access code to open the door and re-entered the cockpit about 40 seconds after he had left the cockpit. He observed the airplane's attitude was 26 degrees nose down and 5 degrees left bank, the speed in the red band, the mach overspeed clackers sounding. He disengaged the autopilot, arrested the descent, switched the engines to continous relight and resumed level flight before climbing back to FL370 and joining the assigned track again. The captain then engaged LNAV and VNAV modes and engaged the autopilot. The airplane continued to Pune for a safe landing, no injuries and no damage occurred. India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation DGCA released their final report concluding the probable cause of the serious incident was: The incident occurred due to inadvertent handling of the control column in fully automated mode by the copilot which got compounded as he was not trained to recover the aircraft in automated mode. Subsequent recovery actions by the PIC without coordination with copilot was the contributory factor.
India...incredible India!