Clean engines, experienced pilots... So, what led to the Air India Boeing plane crash?

It has been a week since Air India's Boeing 787 Dreamliner, operating a flight from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick, crashed in the afternoon of June 12 shortly after take-off, killing 241 out of the 242 people on board and several others on the ground, including students of the BJ Medical College as the plane had hit buildings housing the college hostel. However, there are more questions than answers on what would have caused the plane to catastrophically plunge in less than a minute and crash. 

 

From the videos that emerged following the crash, many theories had emerged. Perhaps it was an engine failure and hence lack of thrust to climb, maybe a bird strike, or maybe just wrong levers pulled. 

 

Tata Sons Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran has cautioned it will be too early to draw conclusions, emphasising that only a full technical analysis will reveal what truly happened. 

 

Critically, Chandrasekaran, speaking on the television channel Times Now, has pointed out that both the engines had clean histories. The right engine of the crashed Dreamliner was, in fact, new and installed in March 2025. The left engine had been serviced in 2023. 

 

He also noted the pilots had been exceptional: Captain Sabharwal with over 11,500 hours of flying, and First Officer Clive Kunder with over 3,400 hours of flying. 

 

Earlier, DGCA had indicated that Sabharwal had logged in 8,200 hours of flying while Kunder had 1,100 hours of flying under his belt. In any case, both were immensely experienced. 

 

Terming him an "exceptional aviator," Air India has said, "Captain Sabharwal's unwavering commitment to the skies and his quiet strength on the ground earned him deep respect across the aviation fraternity." His final rights were performed in Mumbai on Tuesday.

 

Some experts have pointed out that they may just not have had enough time to act in the emergency situation, given the extremely low altitude of around 400 feet above ground.

 

Aditya Paranjape, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at Monash University in Australia, told THE WEEK that from what could be seen from the videos, it was evident that either both engines had shut down or they were producing very little thrust. Whether that happened due to any problem, or they suffered fuel starvation, or something else remained unknown, he had said.

 

"If we assume that things were functioning normally for the first 5-6 seconds before the crash, they barely had 25 seconds before the crash. You had very little time. Even if there was an opportunity to restart the engines, there wasn't enough time for a realistic restart," he noted. 

 

Gaurav Taneja, a former commercial pilot, too, has come out in support of the pilots, also stressing the aspect of hardly a few seconds being available for them to react. 

 

In his latest video on YouTube, Taneja also raised a few questions about why the aircraft used the full length of the runway to take off, which was unusual. 

 

Both the black boxes, the flight data recorder (FDR) as well as the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) have been found and will be a crucial part of the investigation. The FDR logs technical parameters like engine performance, air speed and altitude. On the other hand, CVR captures pilot conversations, alarms and other sounds. Both these should reveal important data on what happened in the final seconds of the horrific crash. Every other part of the airline that is found at the crash site will also be crucial evidence and could carry clues on what the problems were. 

 

India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau will be investigating the crash, with investigators from the UK as well as from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) also likely participating. Some reports have suggested that the black boxes could be sent under supervision to the US, where the NTSB will study them in detail.

 

One line of investigation will also probably look into whether the ram air turbine (RAT), which is an emergency system that can deploy automatically and can enable crucial airplane components to function if there is a dual engine failure, was operational. Reports have indicated that this was probably the case. 

 

Chandrasekaran said one can't jump to any conclusions. 

 

"I am told by all the experts that the black box and the recorders will definitely tell the story. And so we just have to wait for that," he said. 

 

Earlier this week, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation had said that the recent surveillance conducted on Air India's Boeing 787 fleet did not reveal any major safety concerns. However, the regulator did raise concerns regarding recent maintenance-related issues reported by Air India.

 

The airline was advised to strengthen internal coordination across functions, ensure the availability of adequate spares to mitigate delays and strictly adhere to regulations.

 

These observations by the DGCA will make a proper and timely investigation into the crash and complete transparency into the findings even more crucial. There are over 1,100 Dreamliners in use around the world. So, the airlines operating them will also be keenly watching the developments. 

 

Air India was also ordered to conduct additional checks on its 787 fleet following the crash. The airline has said it will, as a precaution, also undertake enhanced safety checks on its Boeing 777 fleet. In the last six days, Air India has had to cancel 83 flights. The airline attributed that to the ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, night curfew in airspaces of many countries in Europe and East Asia, the ongoing enhanced safety checks and the necessary cautious approach being taken by the engineering staff and pilots. 

 

Air India has said it will reduce its international services on the wide-body aircraft by around 15 per cent. The cuts are to be implemented between now and June 20 and will continue until at least mid-July.

India