Abhijit Bhattacharyya | Air India’s Black Thursday: Many Questions to Answer

The weather was clear at Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport on Thursday, June 12, as an 11-year-old Air India Boeing 787-800 (VT-ANB), with 242 people on board, was airborne after a 45-second take-off run from the 3,505-metre Runway 23/5. The temperature was 40.8 degrees Celsius, with normal breeze, humidity and visibility for an airworthy jet to cover the Ahmedabad-London distance. But just after being airborne for less than a minute, the big Boeing Dreamliner failed to climb and generate the required engine thrust and speed to reach cruising height. Instead, it crashed and all on board, except one passenger, died.

The country’s aviation authorities, understandably, will thoroughly investigate the crash and offer suggestions to improve the system for future. Nevertheless, experienced air travellers will be fully justified in asking key questions and make their own independent assessment.

Any crash of this magnitude, avoidable or unavoidable, is a gross flight safety failure of/by the airline, in this case Air India, which is no longer a government corporation. It was a black day for the House of Tatas, which once had icons like pioneer aviator J.R.D. Tata and Ratan Tata.

However, in case the investigation finds any kind of man-made mischief causing this mayhem, then the responsibility will fairly and squarely fall on the state security system.

But, till now, we must regard it as a flight safety failure as even a layman will ask the first, fundamental question: Why did the aircraft, despite leaving the runway, fail to climb with full engine thrust and speed? Some are saying “bird hit”. Isn’t it highly unlikely? The circulating video on the Internet, by now surely seen by millions worldwide, clearly shows that Air India Flight 171 Boeing-787-800 had “stalled”, which in aviation terms means “gross change in fluid flow around aerofoil… resulting in large reduction in lift”. That is both surprising and shocking as the pilot-in-command had all the professional experience of thousands of flying hours and both General Electric-built engines, each generating above 66,000-pound static thrust, are time-tested technology. Plainly, however, the engine makers’ reputation didn’t help anyone on Black Thursday on June 12, 2025.

A disturbing feature of the ill-fated flight was: why was it flying so low, as if it was on the “approach” mode of descent, rather than ascent, and suddenly pulled up with its nose wheels showing a wider “angle-of-attack”? One felt, seeing the video, that the AI-171 pilot was desperately trying to lift his aircraft for “TOGA” (take-off and go around) exercise, when an approaching aircraft misses its landing spot by “over-shot” and ATC (air traffic control) tells the captain to go around and come back for landing.

Another bizarre scenario was that the AI-171 aircraft undercarriage wasn’t retracted the moment it lifted off the ground. That is quite extraordinary, as the protruding undercarriage will only reduce the power-to-weight ratio, thereby increasing both overall drag and put pressure on power plants already burdened with the lift of the 227-ton weight of the aircraft. What happened? Did the plane’s undercarriage hydraulic system malfunction the way it had happened on an Air India domestic Amritsar-Delhi flight in October 2015 when reportedly a brand-new Boeing 787-800 flew the full 400-km distance with its undercarriage jutting out of the belly of the fuselage?

There are myriad questions which cross one’s mind due to several thousand hours of cockpit flying from take-off to touch down years ago, when pilots loved to invite familiar and interested passengers for full-flight duration in the flight crew cabin.

Contextually, another Air India Boeing-747-200 (VT-EBD) crash of January 1, 1978 comes to mind when AI Flight 855 took off from Mumbai’s Santa Cruz airport in “calm and clear weather”, only to plunge 20 seconds later into the Arabian Sea, just 3.2 km from the shore, hitting the water while descending at an “angle of attack of 35 to 40 degrees and exploding on impact”. The inquiry report found that the disaster resulted from “irrational control wheel inputs” on the part of the captain “after his attitude direction indicator (ADI) malfunctioned”.

One regrets to state that this author didn’t have full satisfaction on a Boeing 787-800 “green aircraft” (which means flyable but still lacking interior furnishing and customer avionics) on July 14, 2011 as “cockpit passenger” for 52 minutes from Delhi and back (via the Jaipur sky) on a technical demonstration flight. This was recounted in three newspaper articles — “Romance of the maiden flight” (21 July 2011); “Failed romance of the maiden flight” (22 January 2013) and “A tale of two flights” (14 November 2013). Concern was raised “when the Boeing 787-800 was grounded for several months in early 2013” and in July 2013 when Boeing changed its 787 aircraft chief project engineer Mike Sinnett as the composite-plastic jet continued to face glitches almost two years after it first entered service.

Let’s face the harsh reality. Mega American aviation companies are showing a serious degree of stress and strain over quality control. It is true that aviation tech development is no child’s play, yet Boeing’s vertical decline is too conspicuous to be ignored. Gone are days of its quality, credibility and consumer satisfaction. It will be fairly impossible, in the near future, for the United States to retrieve the situation. The unbridled greed of mega US corporations to capture the Chinese, and now the Indian market, is bound to boomerang. Fifty years back the US was the dominant manufacturer, and the emerging market was Asia. The roles have almost been reversed.

One has to just peruse the annual publications of Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft from the early 21st century to see the plight of the Boeing 787-800. Launched April 26, 2004, the first B787-800 was delivered to All Nippon September 25, 2011. In 2007 itself, Boeing’s “air-worthiness (was) delayed by flight control software”. “On April 2, 2009 Boeing abandoned plans to assign the first six aircraft to airlines”. Boeing has been constantly plagued by delays due to its endless tech glitches. The seventh rescheduling of its test fleet grounding was due to an in-flight fire in November 2010, and a ground fire at London’s Heathrow airport on July 12, 2013.

Without doubt, the Boeing 787-800 remains a chronic snag-prone aircraft. Jane’s 2012-2013 revealed the truth, stating that “up to 65 per cent of the airframe (was) built by external suppliers”. Japan’s Kawasaki and China’s Chengdu Aviation supplied the rudder. The Boeing 787-800’s quality control constitutes a real challenge. One only hopes the inquiry into the Ahmedabad air disaster exposes the reality behind the shattered “American Dream” of those killed on AI Flight 171 on Black Thursday.