Relatives of those who were killed in the devastating Air India crash in June have formally demanded the immediate release of the data from the aircraft’s two flight recorders, insisting that delays in doing so are severely undermining public confidence in the investigation.
On 12 June, Air India Flight 171 crashed into a medical college less than a minute after it took off from Ahmedabad in western India heading for London Gatwick, killing 241 people on board and another 19 on the ground. Only one passenger survived the crash.
While one of the two black boxes was retrieved within roughly 28 hours, the second took three days to recover. Both were taken to Delhi, where data retrieval yielded approximately two hours of cockpit audio and 49 hours of flight data, an Economic Times report stated.
Black boxes provide crucial data such as altitude, airspeed and audio from the pilots’ conversations, which can help investigators establish the cause of a crash.
A preliminary report was issued by India’s aviation authorities one month after the crash, in line with international regulations. It revealed that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s fuel switches had flipped from “run” to “cutoff” within one second of each other and shortly after takeoff, causing the engines to lose power.
The report does not say how this occurred.
Investigators also summarised a conversation between the flight’s two pilots, saying one asked the other why he had flipped the fuel switches. The second pilot denied doing so, the report said.
The report did not identity who said what, but subsequent media reports based on sources in the investigation revealed it was the younger co-pilot, Clive Kunder, who asked flight captain Sumeet Sabharwal why he had turned off the plane’s fuel-supply switches.
The authorities have stressed that they need more time to carry out their full investigation, but victims’ families are now growing increasingly frustrated by a perceived lack of progress.
“We are formally demanding the immediate release of the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder – the black box. These devices contain vital information that can reveal the truth behind this horrific tragedy,” Imtiaz Ali Sayed, who lost several family members in the crash, told AFP.
“Every day without answers deepens the pain of our loss and erodes public trust in aviation safety,” he said, adding that he was speaking on behalf of 60 other families with the “same pain and unanswered questions”.
Both the pilots on board Flight 171 were highly experienced, with about 19,000 total flying hours between them, including more than 9,000 on Boeing 787s.
The preliminary report said CCTV footage showed the plane’s backup engine, known as a RAM air turbine, deployed almost immediately after the plane lifted off the ground, indicating a loss of power from the engines.
The London-bound plane began to lose thrust, and after reaching a height of 650 feet, the jet started to sink. The fuel switches for both engines were turned back to run, and the airplane automatically tried restarting its engines, the report said – but not before the plane crashed into a medical college building.
The incident has rekindled debate among experts over whether planes should have video cameras in the cockpit. Some argue that it would offer valuable insights to investigators, while pilots describe it as an unnecessary intrusion into their workplace that is not justified by the rare cases such footage might be useful.
