Air India Flight 171

Aircraft and route The aircraft involved in the crash was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner registered VT-ANB with 41,868 hours on the airframe. It was delivered to Air India in January 2014. The aircraft's two General Electric GEnx-1B70 engines had about 28,000 and 33,000 operating hours, and both had been installed less than three months before the crash. Passengers and crew On board Flight 171 were 230 passengers and 12 crew; 13 passengers were children, 2 of them infants, while 2 pilots and 10 flight attendants formed the crew. The passenger manifest included 169 Indians, 53 British, 7 Portuguese, and 1 Canadian. The flight was commanded by Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, who had logged approximately 15,600 flight hours, including nearly 8,600 hours on the Boeing 787. The first officer, Clive Kunder, 32, had around 3,400 flight hours, with about 1,100 of those on the Boeing 787. Kunder was the pilot flying, while Sabharwal was the pilot monitoring. Fuel control switches On the Boeing 787, the two fuel control switches are part of the throttle control module and are located just below their respective throttle levers. Moving a switch to CUTOFF immediately halts fuel flow to that engine, causing a loss of thrust, as well as the electrical and hydraulic power that engine supplies. These switches are normally only used on the ground for engine startup and shutdown. In flight, cutting off the fuel to an engine is only done in emergencies such as an engine fire or some other malfunction warranting a shutdown or restart. To prevent accidental activation, each switch is fitted with a metal stop-lock mechanism that requires the switch be pulled up before it can be moved. Additionally, brackets on either side guard the switches from unintentional contact. == Accident ==

Flight 171 was cleared for a full-length takeoff on runway 23, and lifted off at 13:38:39 IST after a 62-second takeoff roll. Flight recorder data showed a maximum airspeed of and a total airborne time of 32 seconds. with wings level and the nose pitched up by about eight degrees, causing the empennage to detach. The aircraft continued breaking up as it collided with additional structures, with parts of the flight deck coming to rest approximately from the mess hall impact site. The wreckage, from the first impact point to the last identified component, was distributed over an area approximately . A video recording from an airport CCTV camera looking down the runway captured the aircraft taking off, initially gaining altitude, then descending gradually. Another video taken by an aviation enthusiast about outside the airport perimeter showed it passing almost overhead just before impact. Both videos showed the aircraft sinking out of view, with fire and smoke rising from the crash site a few seconds later. According to CNN, the enthusiast later told the reporters that it had been behaving strangely, wobbling from side to side, and that the tail appeared to "sag more deeply beneath its nose" as it descended. == Rescue and relief operation ==

The first call to the fire and emergency control room was received at 13:45 IST. Two firefighter teams were sent immediately from Naroda, and the "brigade call" was issued. More than 300 firefighters, 60 fire vehicles, and 20 water bowsers were deployed in response. The Ahmedabad Fire and Emergency Services Department later confirmed the deployment of units from various city divisions. Multiple ambulances, including 20 ambulances from the fire department, were rushed to the location. Teams from the Indian Army, Border Security Force, Central Reserve Police Force, National Disaster Response Force, and Western Railways were deployed to assist with rescue and relief efforts, and a military hospital was put on standby. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation deployed more than 150 vehicles, including earthmovers, excavators, trucks, and a roller, to clear debris from the site. The corporation also deployed engineers and health department personnel, and ordered the emergency readiness of the municipal hospitals in the city. == Casualties ==

in the forward section of Air India's Boeing 787–8 configuration Of the 242 people on board the aircraft, all 12 crew members and 229 of the 230 passengers died in the crash. On the ground, an additional 19 people were killed, and 67 were seriously injured. At least 50 medical students in the hostel buildings at the time of the crash were injured and required hospitalisation. visits the sole survivor in hospital The sole survivor of the crash was 40-year-old British citizen Viswash Kumar Ramesh, who had been seated in 11A, next to an emergency exit. Ramesh said that the section of the aircraft where he was seated detached and came to rest on the ground floor of the hostel, and he escaped through an opening created when the emergency exit broke open. He was filmed walking away from the wreckage before being led to an ambulance. Ramesh sustained multiple minor injuries, including facial cuts and burns to his left hand, and was discharged from the hospital after five days. Six days after the crash, he attended the funeral of his brother, who had also been on the flight. As a result of the crash, he has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). == Investigation ==

India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) was tasked with the investigation of the crash. The British Air Accidents Investigation Branch dispatched a team of four investigators, and the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) sent a "go team" to assist with the investigation. GE Aerospace, which manufactured the aircraft's engines, said it would send a team to India and analyse cockpit data. On 13 June, the first of the aircraft's two enhanced airborne flight recorders (EAFR), each of which performs the functions of both a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder, was recovered from the mess hall rooftop. The second EAFR was recovered from the crash debris on 16 June. The data from the front recorder was successfully downloaded on 24 June at the AAIB laboratory in Delhi; the rear recorder was substantially damaged, preventing data recovery via the usual methods. On 13 June, the DGCA ordered additional pre-departure technical inspections for the airline's Boeing 787 fleet, starting on 15 June. In late November 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported tensions between American and Indian investigators stemming from the view amongst American government and industry officials that the evidence suggests the captain of the flight, Sumeet Sabharwal, deliberately crashed the airliner. Preliminary report are located beneath the throttles, with the RUN and CUTOFF positions labelled in white. On 12 July, the AAIB released a preliminary report outlining its initial findings. After a 62-second takeoff roll, the aircraft rotated at an airspeed of , and lifted off 4 seconds later at 13:38:39 IST. As the aircraft reached its maximum recorded airspeed of 3 seconds after lifting off the runway, both fuel control switches sequentially moved from RUN to CUTOFF, 1 second apart. Both engines immediately shut down and stopped producing thrust. Airport CCTV showed no significant bird activity in the flight path, and the aircraft began losing altitude before crossing the airport perimeter. An air traffic controller requested the flight's call sign, but received no response. The cockpit voice and flight data recordings ended 6 seconds after the mayday call, 32 seconds after takeoff, at 13:39:11. At that point in time, the first engine had re-lit and was beginning to spool up. The second engine had also re-lit, but its core speed continued to fall while its FADEC introduced additional fuel in an attempt to recover thrust. warning that fuel switches similar to those on the 787 had been installed on Boeing 737 aircraft with the stop-lock mechanisms disengaged, the exact nature of which was not described. Air India said it had not performed the recommended inspections because they were not mandatory. The incident aircraft's maintenance records showed that its throttle control module had been replaced in 2019 and 2023 for reasons unrelated to the fuel switches, and that no fuel switch defects had been reported since then. The throttle levers were found in the idle position when recovered after the crash; however, the flight recorder data showed that both had been kept at takeoff thrust until impact. The recovered flap controls and flight recorder data showed that flaps had been properly set for takeoff at five degrees. The report did not identify any mechanical faults nor recommend safety actions for operators or manufacturers of the 787 or its GEnx engines. == Responses ==

, the chief minister of Gujarat (right), both in white, surveying the crash site. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the crash site on 13 June. He also visited the hospital, where he met the lone survivor from the plane crash and those who had been injured on the ground. Home Minister Amit Shah spoke with the Gujarat chief minister, Bhupendrabhai Patel, following the incident. Patel stated that officials had been instructed to carry out "immediate rescue and relief operations" and to make arrangements on a "war footing". UK prime minister Keir Starmer expressed his condolences, and the UK Foreign Office arranged crisis teams in India and the UK. On the day of the crash, Air India chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran issued a statement expressing the "deepest condolences" to those affected, and that the airline was focused on supporting victims and their families, and assisting emergency response teams at the site. Speaking to the airline's 700 staff on 17 June, he said that crash was "the most heartbreaking one, which I thought I would never see", and that the incident should serve "as a driving force to create a safer airline". Air India CEO Campbell Wilson stated that "this is a difficult day for all of us at Air India", saying that special teams of caregivers would be mobilised for additional support and adding that the investigations would take time. Air India Flight 143, flying from Delhi to Paris with Wilson aboard, returned to Delhi for him to assist the airline with the crisis. One week after the crash, about two weeks before the AAIB issued its preliminary report, Air India training captains performed a series of 787–8 simulator experiments duplicating what was then known about the flight's weight and balance profile. They found that even with flaps retracted and landing gear left down after takeoff, the aircraft was able to climb safely with only one engine producing thrust. The pilots also attempted to simulate electrical failures that could cause a dual-engine flame-out—which is deemed unrecoverable below the flight's maximum recorded altitude—but were unsuccessful. Following the release of the preliminary report, the Indian Commercial Pilots' Association criticised what it called "reckless and unfounded insinuation of pilot suicide", while the Airline Pilots' Association of India said it was "surprised at the secrecy surrounding these investigations" and that "suitably qualified personnel were not taken on board for the probe". On 17 July, the AAIB released an appeal discouraging speculation from the public and the media. == Aftermath ==

On the day of the crash, Tata Group, the parent company of Air India, announced voluntary payments of to the families of each deceased passenger, along with coverage of medical expenses for those injured. Under the terms of the Montreal Convention of 1999, Air India is liable to pay approximately to the families of each deceased passenger. The Tata Group later extended the same compensation to the families of on-ground victims who were killed or injured, following a request by the Indian Medical Association. Immediately after the crash, Air India suspended 83 wide-body flights for six weeks to perform government-mandated safety checks on its Boeing 787 fleet. The airline began gradually restoring routes in mid-July, with a full recovery planned by October. The airline also announced that it plans to run three weekly flights between Ahmedabad and Heathrow Airport from 1 August to 30 September, replacing the five weekly flights between Ahmedabad and Gatwick in the previously existing schedule. Air India retired flight number AI171 and its reciprocal AI172, and began to use the flight numbers AI159 and AI160 respectively on the Ahmedabad–London Gatwick route until its initial pause in July 2025, By late-October 2025, however, the Ahmedabad–London Gatwick route was reinstated and still used AI159 and AI160, the replacement flight numbers for AI171 and AI172. Air India subsidiary Air India Express also retired the flight number IX171 for similar reasons. On 22 July, Air India said that it had concluded inspections of its fleet of Boeing planes and had not found any problems with the locking mechanisms of their fuel switches. Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg cancelled his plans to attend the Paris Air Show and offered his condolences to the victims. Ortberg also said he would send a team of experts to aid the investigators at the crash site. Analysts noted that the stock rose 1.6% that daythe first trading day since the AAIB released its preliminary report on 12 Julyattributing the rise to the AAIB and FAA concluding that it was unlikely a flaw in the fuel switch design had caused the crash, and also had not issued any airworthiness directives to manufacturers or operators of 787 aircraft. Cash settlements were offered by Air India (of undisclosed amounts) to families of the victims, on the condition that they do not initiate legal action against the airline and the aircraft manufacturer. == See also ==