On Saturday the ruins of crashed Air India aircraft located in Ahmedabad Airport. | Photo Credit: Vijay Soneji
A preliminary report on the tragic fatal accident of the London Air India (Flight No. AI 171) soon after take -off from Ahmedabad 12. June was released late last night. Did the Office for Investigations of Air accidents (AAIB) be released voluntarily or under intensive international pressure? It seems that the stories in Air Current and Wall Street Journal about fuel switch and endangered Walkout of the US National Transport Safety Council and Possible AAIB of the United Kingdom accelerated from the investigation. The report has given details, but there are several questions that are not covered.
Over the past month, electronic media was full of narratives on YouTube Painting Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, the type of aircraft that crashed, a black brush. But the aircraft is safe and several other factors could cause an accident. When the authorities appointed the CEO of the Police in the Investigation Committee and threw the sabotage angle, they returned to several cases of pilot suicidal events. The preliminary report with several shortcomings gives the indication in this respect.
Page 14 Messages, which have a picture of CCTV shots AI 171 taken off and insert, shows that the RAM air turbine has been deployed. This picture was also available to the authorities on the day of the accident. The recorded digital flight data (DFDR) are not necessary to identify its deployment. Thirty days of misinformation from the accident increased anxiety between passengers and the level of stress of the operating crew on Dreamliners around the world.
Clarity
The message contains several vague statements. On page 13, it is clear that the captain monitored the pilot and the first officer was a flying pilot. The flying pilot processes the controls during take -off and both hands will be on the control column during take -off and climb until the autopilot is connected. The only pilot whose hands are free is pilot monitoring – in this case a captain. The message is trying to give the impression that one of them could manipulate fuel switches. Only the captain could move the fuel voter to cut off and not the first officer.
The message says: “In the voice cockpit record, one of the pilots is to ask the other why he cut off the fuel. The second pilot replied that he did not do that!” This is such an amateur attempt to hide this fact. It is mandatory for all pilots to wear headphones during take -off or landing. The voice recorder for the cockpit records any transmission from Captain Mika as Cam 1 and Copilot as CAM 2. The investigator can positively identify who said what. Here you can see a very bad attempt to divert from the facts.
Page 11 The reports report other clear information about the wrong information. In item 7, the details of the captain mention that he holds a license for airlines license. Its license number is not stated. The license date is 14 May 2021. His experience with flying to Boeing 787s is mentioned as 8 596.43 hours and as a pilot commander on this type of aircraft is 8 260.43 hours.
For flying any large aircraft, the transport license of the airline is mandatory. The captain’s license was issued on May 14, 2021 and the accident was 12 June 2025. According to the requirements for civil aviation for time restrictions and duties on the General Directorate for Civil Aviation, the pilot can fly a maximum of 1,000 hours per year. The report suggests that the captain flew more than 8,200 hours in four years and 21 days. Can one believe some of the numbers listed in the report as authentic? On the day of the crash, DGCA provided the level of the captain’s experience as 8,200 hours and the first office as 1,100 hours. This report gives the captain a total hour of 15 638 hours and the first officer is 3 403 hours. The report, as in all air accidents over the years, does not meet the standards of international civil aviation Annex 13 and the Indian Air Sector proves to be an embarrassment for a safe world.
Airport services
There is no mention of findings at the airport and its shortcomings in compulsory safety elements and facilities. The announcements for airmen, notams, issued immediately after the accident, clearly mention Rffs Zero. This means that the rescue and fire combat services at the airport are zero, which means that all foams and chemicals needed to combat firefire were zero. ICAO Annex 14, Volume 1 Standards order that Ahmedabad airport required a category of 9 RFF. When foam and chemicals used during the fire truck are supplemented to RFF to category 9, the airport authorities have to go new notam to cancel the earlier and indicate that category 9 is available. When the airport was open for only three hours, no such notam has been issued. Flights left and came with available zero fire and rescue services. It is a violation of serious safety and the report is silent about airport failures. Every airline that operated flights after an accident without available rescue and fire fighting threatened the lives of everyone on board. None of the pilots who operated these flights did not even notice such a serious lack and did not know about the danger to all.
Data was downloaded in the recorder of digital flight and cockpit and details are available from investigators. International agencies pushed a preliminary report to mention the movement of fuel control switches. The unclear tongue deployed by AAIB let people think why fuel selectors moved, and raised doubts about the security of the Boeing 787s.
It is time for India to publish factual reports and deal with the human factor in watching the crew instead of treating them as machines. A regulator, airlines and even judges must understand that fatigue and stress of any kind can be a dangerous cocktail. India has suffered a great tragedy and the families of the leaving souls deserve honest closure. Many other such accidents will follow if these problems are not urgently solved. Let’s move from the ego of a filled commercial air system to civil aviation with a heart for human factors affecting the crew.
Captain A. (Mohan) Ranganathan is a former aviation pilot and advisor to the safety of aviation. He is also a former member of the Civil Aviation Safety Council in India
Published – July 12, 2025 20:50
