Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu on Saturday said the crash of Air India Flight AI-171 in Ahmedabad, which claimed 241 lives, has deeply shaken the nation and that decoding the recovered black box is crucial to understanding the tragedy.
Addressing the media, Naidu expressed his condolences and said, “The incident that happened in Ahmedabad has shaken the entire nation. My deepest condolences to the families who have lost loved ones. I have personally lost my father in a road accident, so I can understand the pain to some extent.”
Naidu said that he immediately rushed to the crash site and acknowledged the swift response of the Gujarat government in carrying out rescue operations. He also confirmed that the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has recovered the black box from the wreckage, which is expected to provide critical insight into the moments leading up to the crash.
“The AAIB team recovered the black box around 5 PM yesterday. Decoding it will give us in-depth information about what went wrong just before or during the crash. We are awaiting the full report,” he said.
Samir Kumar Sinha, Secretary of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, provided a detailed timeline of the accident:
“On June 12 at 1:39 PM, Air India Flight AI-171 took off from Ahmedabad for London’s Gatwick. Within seconds, it began losing altitude from approximately 650 feet. The pilot issued a Mayday call but contact was lost soon after. One minute later, the aircraft crashed in Medhaninagar, about 2 km from the airport.”
The flight had 242 people on board, including 230 passengers, 2 pilots, and 10 crew members. Captain Sumit Sabharwal and First Officer Clive Sundar were in command of the aircraft, a Boeing Dreamliner 787-8, which had completed the Paris–Delhi–Ahmedabad route without incident earlier that day.
Following the crash, the Ahmedabad airport runway was temporarily closed but reopened for limited operations by 5 PM the same day.
In response to the tragedy, the government has formed a high-level multidisciplinary committee to investigate the causes behind the crash and to evaluate current Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). The panel will also recommend new safety protocols to prevent similar incidents in the future.
Officials from the AAIB, under the Ministry of Civil Aviation, have launched a formal investigation into the crash and are working at the site in Ahmedabad.
