Fatal crash opens Pandora’s Box of problems for India aviation

In only little more than a month since the crash of an Air India B787 Dreamliner seconds after take-off from Ahmedabad, there are more questions than answers about the cause of the deadliest aviation disaster worldwide in more than a decade. Associate editor and chief correspondent, Tom Ballantyne, reports.

June 1st 2025

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There has been no lack of speculation from aviation professionals and amateurs alike about the cause of the tragic crash of Air India Flight 171 shortly after it took off from Runway 23 at Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport on June 12. Read More »

Videos of its brief flight clearly show the jet had trouble continuing its climb out and was struggling to find the lift required. Its undercarriage, which should have been retracted immediately after take-off, was still deployed.

Following the retrieval, ongoing analyses of the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder is now focusing on the actions of the cockpit crew in efforts to determine why the fuel switches were turned off when the aircraft was taking off.

Air India has said one of the GE GenX engines was brand new and installed in March this year. The second engine was last serviced in 2023 and was not scheduled for another check until December.

All of this is what it is, pure speculation.

Whatever happened, the first hull loss of a B787 has resulted in the deaths of 229 of 230 passengers, all 12 crew and multiply fatalities on the ground.

The aircraft involved was built in 2010 and delivered to Air India in 2014. It had accumulated 39,450 flight hours, was close to 7,400 cycles and had been in regular scheduled service in the months before the accident.

India’s Air Accident Investigation Board (AAIB) launched its investigation immediately after the accident aided by technical advisors from the U.S. National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) and the UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch. Boeing and GE Aerospace teams were on site within days.

While air crash investigations are complex and often take months to reach a conclusion, International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) guidance does call for an interim report within 30 days of a major accident. Until the July 12 report was published, there had been limited information available from the AAIB, a concern among global aviation safety experts.

Air India CEO, Campbell Wilson, has released videos expressing condolences for those who perished and stressed the airline is fully co-operating with the investigation. This commitment was repeated after the release of the preliminary report.

Even these public statements came under scrutiny with India’s media alleging Wilson’s speech was “plagiarized” from the condolence speech made by American Airlines CEO, Robert Isom, following the January 30 mid-air collision of a commercial jet and a military helicopter in Washington DC that killed 67 people.

Neither Wilson nor the government should be criticized for failing to hold open press conferences when they do not have solid information about what happened.

They should not be expected to comment on speculation without having the facts to hand.

But other developments following the accident have cast a shadow not only over Air India but the country’s wider aviation landscape.

Within days of the accident, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) ordered Air India to remove three executives from its scheduling department, a punishment for voluntary disclosure of repeated flight and duty time rule violations.

It also increased surveillance across India’s aviation system and detailed violations ranging from improper maintenance to a simulator with out-of-date software.

The DGCA said its actions were based on “the review of repetitive snags” reported on the Air India fleet in the 15 days before the accident, although it did not make any direct links to AI171.

Then, on June 20, it issued a stern warning to Air India for repeated violations of pilot flight duty time regulations, highlighting significant lapses in crew scheduling and oversight.

That followed an investigation into flights from Bengaluru to London on May 16 and May 17 that exceeded the mandated 10-hour flight time limit for pilots.

The breaches prompted the DGCA to order the airline to remove three senior executives from crew scheduling roles, including a divisional vice president, a chief manager of crew scheduling and a planning executive, citing “systemic failures in scheduling protocol and oversights”.

In a sweeping surveillance exercise conducted less than two weeks after the crash, the DGCA uncovered a range of serious safety and compliance violations across India’s aviation ecosystem.

The regulator’s inspection, carried out by two teams led by the Joint Director General overnight and in the early morning hours at major airports, including Delhi and Mumbai, revealed multiple operational, technical and safety-related shortcomings involving airlines, airports, aircraft maintenance and ground handling operations. DGCA’s surveillance covered the critical areas of flight operations, airworthiness, ramp safety, Air Traffic Control (ATC), Communication, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS) systems and pre-flight medical evaluations.

In aircraft inspections, DGCA observed recurring defects, indicating ineffective maintenance and inadequate rectification.

Some aircraft had issues such as unserviceable thrust reversers and flap slat levers that were not locked. Aircraft Maintenance Engineers (AMEs) were found to have skipped safety precautions, failed to attend to snag rectification and neglected to log technical defects.

On June 25, it was reported India had declined an offer from ICAO to include a UN investigator, currently in India, as an observer of the crash investigation, a situation that is expected to be revised.

ICAO has sent investigators to major international incidents, including the downing of MH17 in 2014 over Ukraine, although that intervention followed a formal invitation.

By the end of June, Air India had completed DGCA mandated ‘Enhanced Safety Inspections’ on 26 of its 33 B787-8 and -9s. They have been cleared for service.

As a matter of added precaution, Air India will undertake enhanced safety checks on its B777 fleet. “Going forward, we will continue to cooperate with the authorities, viz AAIB, DGCA and the Ministry of Civil Aviation to ensure the safety of our passengers, our crew and our aircraft, which remains our highest priority,” an airline statement said.

While the aviation world and other B787 operators wait for a definitive answer about the cause of the AI171 accident, the industry can be sure Campbell Wilson is not the first airline CEO to deal with a horrific air accident and he will almost certainly not be the last.