Air India has announced a 15% reduction in its international widebody operations following the deadly crash.
New Delhi: India is likely to send the black box recovered from the Air India flight AI 171, which crashed in Ahmedabad last week, to the United States for data recovery as the recorder sustained heavy external damage due to the fire, an Economic Times report said.
Presently, India is not equipped to extract data from black boxes that have sustained heavy damage. Thus, according to the report, the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) will be sent to the Washington-based laboratory of the National Safety Transport Board (NTSB) for analysis.
The report will then be shared with the government's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which is probing the horrific crash. The time to extract data from the black box could range from days to months, depending on the extent of damage, as per the newspaper report.
While the exact reason behind the crash will only be known after decoding the black box, an aviation expert has suggested dual engine failure as a possible cause. Former US Navy pilot Captain Steve Scheibner, in an interview with India Today, suggested that the deployment of the ram air turbine (RAT) shortly after takeoff pointed to a dual engine failure.
Last week, the London-bound Air India flight, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, crashed into the BJ Medical College hostel building in Ahmedabad within seconds of take-off. The tragedy left 274 people, including 241 passengers and crew on board and over two dozen others on the ground, dead.
Crashed plane had ‘clean history': ChandrasekaranTata Sons and Air India Chairman N Chandrasekaran said that the airline’s Boeing 787-8 aircraft that crashed moments after takeoff in Ahmedabad on June 12 had a clean history, and the pilots flying it were “exceptional”. In an interview with Times Now, Chandrasekaran said that it would be best to wait for the investigation to conclude, and not jump to any conclusion on what might have led to the crash, the worst aviation disaster involving an Indian carrier in at least four decades. “There are a lot of speculations and a lot of theories. But the fact that I know so far is this particular aircraft, this specific tail…has a clean history. As for the engines, the right engine was a new engine put in March 2025. The left engine was last serviced in 2023 and due for its next maintenance check in December 2025. Both engine histories are clean,” Chandrasekaran said. The Tata Sons chairman also said that he deeply regrets that the accident happened in a Tata airline, and felt “very sorry”, adding that the Tata group is examining the possibility of establishing a trust to support the families of the crash victims. |
