AAIB 'totally unbiased', says aviation minister on Air India crash probe

Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu on Monday said the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is following a "definitive, rule-based process" in probing the June 12 Air India plane crash and is "totally unbiased".

Speaking in Rajya Sabha on the first day of the Monsoon Session of Parliament, Naidu said the government wants to find out what exactly happened in the Air India plane crash, in which over 260 people were killed. The minister added that the exact cause will be known only after AAIB's final probe report is out.

"AAIB was successful in decoding data from black boxes of Air India plane that crashed last month," he said.

What did the AAIB report say?

The AAIB's initial report into the June 12 crash of Air India Flight 171 – a Boeing 787-8 departing from Ahmedabad – revealed that both engine fuel control switches were manually moved to the 'CUTOFF' position seconds after takeoff, leading to a total loss of thrust. This happened despite no mechanical faults detected in the aircraft or engines, the report said.

Cockpit voice recordings, mentioned in the report released on July 12, captured one pilot asking the other why the switches had been turned off, and no technical abnormalities (fuel, weight, or avionics) were found. While engineers briefly restored one engine, it was too late to prevent the crash into a hostel building.

The report, however, said it was too early to draw any "definite conclusions" on what led to the plane crash, as the probe is still on.

On June 12, the Air India aircraft going to London Gatwick from Ahmedabad crashed into a hostel soon after take off, killing 260 people, including 19 people on the ground. Out of the 242 people onboard, one passenger survived.