- By Talibuddin Khan
- Tue, 08 Jul 2025 02:30 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
Air India Plane Crash: The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) on Tuesday submitted a preliminary report to the Ministry of Civil Aviation on its probe into the deadly plane crash in Ahmedabad last month, which resulted in the death of 275 people, including 241 onboard the ill-fated flight and 34 on the ground.
According to AAIB sources, reported by ANI, the probe report is based on the initial findings into the plane crash. The probe report is expected to provide key information about the last moments of the plane and the possible reason behind the crash. The probe report will reportedly be released to the public later next week.
The investigation is being conducted following international protocols outlined in ICAO Annexe 13 and India's Aircraft (Investigation of Accidents and Incidents) Rules, 2017.
A London-bound Air India plane (AI-171), a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, on June 12, crashed shortly after taking off from the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad. The plane crashed into a hostel of BJ Medical College near the Ahmedabad airport and turned into a fireball shortly after the collision. At the time of the crash, 230 passengers and 12 crew members were onboard the ill-fated plane, and only one survived the crash.
Since the incident, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has taken steps to assist the AAIB in conducting a full-scale inquiry, which is leading the investigation from its lab in New Delhi. Experts from the Indian Air Force, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), US-based National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Boeing, aviation medicine and Air Traffic Control are assisting in the investigation.
The AAIB on June 25 retrieved and downloaded the data from the memory module of the black box and is examining the position of the fuel switches on the flight. The AAIB is also investigating whether a dual-engine failure would have resulted in the crash. One black box was recovered from the rooftop of a building at the crash site on June 13, and the other from the debris on June 16.
This is also the first time India is decoding black box data domestically. Earlier, AAIB used to send black boxes of damaged aircraft to overseas decoding centres in countries like the UK, USA, France, Italy, Canada and Russia. Indian labs earlier lacked the equipment and dedicated facility to retrieve black box data from serious aviation accidents.