End the speculation, release the AI 171 crash report

On June 12, 2025, 241 passengers on board Air India AI 171, perished in a fiery crash just after takeoff at Ahmedabad, Gujarat. There was one survivor passenger. Nineteen persons on the ground lost their lives, making it the first crash of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner since its introduction into commercial aviation. There are over 1,175 Dreamliners flying with various airlines, operating an average of 12 hours a day. Since the crash, Dreamliners have flown more than two million hours without a single engine failure during take-off. In the history of airline operations, there have been very rare instances of a dual engine failure on take-off. The accident involving a UPS MD-11, on November 4, 2025, is one, which was due to engine separation. After this crash, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released relevant information with daily briefings — something that never happens in India.

Ever since the crash, the electronic media and social media YouTubers have been spreading far-fetched theories to create an atmosphere of fear and also question the safety standards of the Boeing 787. What is being spread is a diversion from the truth and the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA), Government of India, has played into their hands by delaying the release of the final investigation report. The promise of there being a “Transparent” report as soon as possible, which the Aviation Minister announced on the day after the crash, appears to be another statement which has been swept under the carpet — as is the norm for all the aviation accident reports in India.

Here is the chronology. The crash happened on the afternoon of June 12 , 2025. According to the ANI report, one of the flight recorders was recovered on June 13, 2025 from the roof top of a building where the plane crashed. The second flight recorder was recovered from the debris on June 16, 2025. The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) lab in Delhi downloaded and accessed the data by June 25, 2025. The AAIB’s preliminary report was released on July 12, 2025. But this report was sketchy and only created more questions than it answered.

‘Threat perception’, a mysterious order

What has not drawn the attention of many is the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) order, based on threat perception identified by intelligence agencies, in providing the Chief of the AAIB with ‘X Category Commando protection’ on a 24X7 basis. This writer has been following air accident investigations of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB)-United Kingdom since 1973 and has never come across an accident investigator requiring commando protection. This order was effective from June 16, just three days after the first flight recorder was recovered. It appears that the MHA and the MoCA were aware of facts which are not being revealed to the public.

The weird theories being floated around and the wild speculations could have been avoided had the Aviation Ministry been transparent with the crash findings. All that it required was a straightforward release of the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) readouts of AI 171, from the commencement of take-off roll to the time of crash, when the recording stops — a mere one minute and 40 seconds. A cryptic sentence in the preliminary accident report, “Why did you do that… I did not do that” — of a conversation between the pilots — only added to all the wild theories.

What the data would show

From the preliminary report, it was established that the copilot was the pilot flying and the captain was the pilot monitoring (doing copilot duties). Air India procedure mandates that the captain handles the thrust levers until the takeoff decision speed is attained. The copilot handles the controls. At this speed’s call (autocall), the captain will remove his hands from the thrust levers. Based on the preliminary report, there should have been the following calls recorded on the CVR: at the rotation speed of 155 kts (08:08:35 in the report), the call should have been ‘Rotate’. The report mentions that the lift-off was at 08:08:39 and there should have been a ‘Positive Rate call’ when the altimeter shows an increase in height. This call will be by the captain who was the pilot monitoring. The preliminary report follows up with a statement that the No.1 Fuel Control Switch and No. 2 Fuel control switch transitioned to cut-off in two seconds, one after the other. This shut off the fuel supply to the engines — the fuel shut off valves will close and the engines will be starved of fuel supply.

A cardinal rule in flying is that in the event of a major emergency, it is the captain who should take over the controls from the copilot, with the copilot reverting to pilot monitoring duties and carrying out the non-normal checklist that the captain would call out. In the crash of AI 171, the immediate call of the captain at 08:08:44 — when the two engines shut down — should have been “My Controls” and the immediate response of the copilot would have been “Your Controls”. Were these calls recorded on the CVR? The AAIB has an experienced Boeing 787 examiner pilot in its team who would have identified this had the mandatory call outs and procedures been followed. If they were, the assumption that the engines shut down due to ‘an electrical power failure’ or ‘software failure’ (which are the theories and speculation on social media) can be considered to be a factor in the accident. The Boeing 787’s fuel control switches cannot move due to a software or an electrical power glitch. They are spring-loaded switches that have to be physically lifted off the ‘Run’ gate, moved aft and dropped into the ‘Cut-off’ gate. The movement towards ‘Run’ to restart the engines has to follow the same procedure which is to lift the switch off the ‘Cut-off’ gate, moved forward and dropped into the ‘Run’ gate. The Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR), as well as the area mike of the CVR (which will record all the ambient sounds in the cockpit) will clearly record this. The Boeing 787 examiner would be aware of this, would have listened to the CVR, and would have gone through the DFDR readouts.

The DFDR would also record every control column movement and control deflections. It can be easily identified who was handling the controls during the take-off and the segment after the engine failures. What readers should know is the systems that work and what will not work in the cockpit instrument presentations. While the limited power supply from the battery and the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) limits the supply only to essential items such as the captain’s instrument panel, and engine fire protection, to name a few — as an example — the instrument panel in front of the copilot goes blank. This is one of the major reasons why the captain must take over the controls immediately as the copilot will not have anything available in front of him. If the CVR did not indicate the positive takeover of controls by the captain, the facts become very evident. Is this the reason why the Ministry of Home Affairs Intelligence considered there was a threat perception to the AAIB chief?

The damage being caused

It does not take more than 100 days to identify the facts and release a transparent report. The credibility of Indian aviation is already suspect. By whitewashing an accident report, it will only add to the perception. The NTSB, the AAIB-U.K., and Boeing are aware of the DFDR and CVR readouts. The U.S Federal Aviation Administration and aviation regulators in the countries where Boeing 787s are flown, have all cleared the aircraft. The MoCA would do well to change the impression that there was an ‘electrical/software issue’ that caused the accident and release the investigation report immediately. The longer the Ministry delays this, the greater the danger of pilots being stressed and preoccupied with their mind anticipating this danger instead of being 100 per cent in the cockpit.

Captain A. (Mohan) Ranganathan is a former airline instructor pilot and aviation safety adviser. He is also a former member of the Civil Aviation Safety Advisory Council (CASAC), India