The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the pride of modern aviation, rotates on the runway with 242 lives aboard with the engines at takeoff thrust. Suddenly, the engines go to idle as the weight comes off the wheels. Speed rapidly bleeds off. A desperate mayday mayday echoes, then silence. Just 36 seconds after takeoff, all but one are gone. This is Air India flight 171, the first fatal crash of a 787. What caused this catastrophe and what does it mean for an airline grappling with recent disruptions? And what might a computer have to do with it? Well, stay with me. This is a tragedy we need to unpack piece by piece with the latest facts on this episode of Taking Off.Hey everyone, Dan Milikin here and I’m diving into the heart-wrenching story of Air India Flight 171 which crashed in a metabad on June 12th, 2025. As an aviation reporter, I’ve covered incidents before, but this one hits really hard. Almost 300 lives lost, the deadliest air disaster in a decade, and the first fatal crash of Boeing’s 787 Dreamlininer. My focus is accuracy. So, we’re sticking to verified facts, no speculation. We’re drawing from the wreckage, the evidence, and the ongoing investigation and what investigators are looking at. We’ll explore the 787’s history, Air India’s maintenance record. We’ll hear from my friend Noel Phillips about his experience flying on an Air India 787, recent flight disruptions, and we’ll explain the FedEx system for non-pilots, the computer system that controls the engines. And finally, we’ll look at an extreme miracle that one passenger had. Spoiler alert, he did not jump from the airborne plane. Let’s honor the victims by getting all this right and learning what we can to save lives. The Boeing 787 Dreamlininer, launched in 2011, redefined longhaul aviation with its lightweight composite fuselage, advanced aerodynamics, and 20% better fuel efficiency than older jets.Conceived in 2003 as the 7E7, it became the 787 in 2005, offering a range of 8,750 miles. Powered by General Electric GX or Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines, the 787-8, the model in this crash, seats 248 to 256 passengers with Air India’s configuration for 256 in two classes. By June 2025, Boeing had delivered, 1189 of over 2500 ordered 787s to airlines like all Nepon Airways, ANA, United, many others around the world and Air India, which operates 34 that they have 27 787-8s and 7-9s.Development of the 787 was rocky. I know, shocker hearing that about anything Boeing these days. Boeing’s outsourcing led to supply chain delays, pushing the first flight from 2008 to December of 2009. Cost overruns hit billions, but the 787’s delivery to ANA in 2011 was a milestone. Personally, I’ve flown as a passenger on the 787 many times, and it’s one of my favorite airplanes. Early issues included in 2013 lithium ion battery fires that grounded the fleet until they had fixes and a 2013 Ethiopian Airlines fire at Heathrow from a faulty transmitter. Rolls-Royce engine corrosion and a 2024 LAM Airlines mid-flight dive due to a pilot seat glitched raised concerns, but no fatalities had occurred. A 2024 whistleblower Sam Capore alleged fuselage assembly shortcuts, prompting the FAA reinspections, though Boeing’s tests showed no immediate risks. Until flight 171, the 787 had no fatal crashes or hull losses across 2.3 million flights and 22 million passengers annually. The crash aircraft Victor Tango Alpha November Bravo, a 12-year-old 787-8 delivered in January of 2014, had 41,000 flight hours and 7,400 cycles, which is typical for its age. It flew 700 trips in the past year, including Mumbai to Dubai and Delhi to Paris with its last sea check in June of 2023 and the next one due in December 2025. The Cch check is a thorough detailed maintenance inspection on commercial aircraft, typically every 18 to 24 months or after a set number of flight hours or cycles. This first fatal 787 crash has stunned the industry, raising more questions about Boeing and Air India and leading investigators to check out the FedEx system, which we’ll get to in a bit. But first, background on Air India. It was founded 1932 by JRD Tata. Air India was nationalized in 1953 and grew into a global carrier. It was privatized in 2022 under Tata Group and it operates 190 plus aircraft including 58 Boeings with 470 new jets on order including 20 787s. Its 2024 merger with Vistara aims to modernize but aging planes and delivery delays persist. Air India’s safety record is mixed. Notable crashes include the 1985 Flight 182 bombing where 329 died, a 2010 Mangalore overrun that resulted in 158 deaths, and a 2020 Kerala skid where 17 people died. Maintenance issues have drawn scrutiny. 2018, the DGCA uh India’s equivalent FAA audit flagged inadequate upkeep leading to fines. A 2023 report cited maintenance staff shortages, though recent investments from that merger have improved the training in the facilities. According to the Times of India, VTB’s logs show compliance, but investigators are probing potential lapses. The National Security Guard has ruled out sabotage. I reached out to my friend and travel expert Null Phillips who has some experience flying on Air India 787s to get his feedback about the airline and the airplane. Null. Yeah, thanks Dan. So yeah, I’ve flown Air India a few times actually on domestic and international flights on their A320s, the trip 7s and yeah, the 787s too. And from my experience, well, they’re all a bit worn out really even on the newest planes with the 787. And honestly, considering it was a nearly new plane at the time, it was in a really horrendous state on board. The seats were falling to bits. Honestly, it was filthy as well. I remember the APU wasn’t working and um I had to use the ground power unit to get us going. It’s not something that is that uncommon, but it just was something that I noticed at the time. I guess honestly, I’ve flown Air India again recently. They were a bit better, but they’ve still got quite a way to go in my opinion. and they’re undergoing some sort of brand refresh at the minute. They’ve got some new owners. They’re buying some A350s and some X Delta trip 7s, which honestly I flew on. They weren’t too bad, but they still have quite a lot of these older planes in the fleet. And yes, I’m including the 787s in that because the state of the one I flew on, it made it feel like a much older aircraft than it actually was.Honestly, it is completely tragic what happened to this flight, though. I mean, we have to think and be so careful not to speculate too much because the end of the day, 250 people lost their lives. Really sad. But I think we need to just let the investigators do their jobs and we’ll wait for the outcome. Um, I suppose the only benefit of it really is that just like every time we have a tragedy like this in the aviation world, well, we end up learning from it. And if that’s all we can hope for, I guess at least it makes us all a little bit safer in the future. Really? Thanks, Null. Okay, that’s all the background. Let’s go over what we know, the the facts of the crash. On June 12th, 2025, Air India flight AI 171, a Boeing 787-8 took off from Sardar Valabia Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad at 138 p.m. bound for London Gatwick. carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew with 169 Indians, 53 British, seven Portuguese, one Canadian. It reached 625 ft with 425 ft above the airport’s elevation. The captain had 8,200 hours flying. The first officer had,00 in the US generally you have to have 1500 hours minimum to get your ATP certificate to be hired by the airlines. There are exceptions down to a thousand hours if you go to a 4-year aviation university, but then it’s called a restricted ATP, and I’m not going to get into all that. Outside the US, that minimum requirement for the FO, the first officer, is often not required. And the US developed that requirement really only recently after the Kan air crash of 2009. Before that you could be sitting in the right seat with as little as 250 hours for India and the directorate general of civil aviation the DGCA to be first officer it can be as little as 2002 250 hours for captains the requirement is the airline transport pilot license the ATPL with the minimum 1500 hours. Okay, more facts that we know. In the moments after takeoff, the RAT, the ram air turbine deployed, according to video, the RAT will deploy automatically under some specific circumstances like both engines uh spooled back or hydraulic failure, electrical failure, and some others. Or it can be manually deployed by the pilots. Also, no smoke came out of either engine. So, at 1:39 p.m., 36 seconds after takeoff, Captain Sumit Cyberwal issued a Mayday Mayday call. And his exact words were, “Mayday, mayday, mayday. No power, no thrust, going down.” Nine words, no response followed. The jet crashed into a doctor’s accommodation building at BJ Medical College and Civil Hospital, 1.24 24 miles from the runway, killing 241 on board and at least 33 on the ground. And the total is nearing 300. The fireball left the tail in in a building and the landing gear un retracted. And we’ll talk about that miracle survivor in a moment. By June 13th, the next day, 300 firefighters and sniffer dogs recovered the flight data recorder, the FDR, from a hostile rooftop 1,000 ft from the main wreckage. The black boxes are usually located in the rear of the airplane, which was intact and sticking out of that building. The cockpit voice recorder, the CVR, was found on June 16th, completing the blackbox recovery. The FDR logs thousands of parameters including FADC systems while the CVR captures pilot communications. The aircraft accident investigation bureau or AIB which is India’s official organization responsible for investigating like the US NTSB is working with the US NTSB the AIB UK Boeing and GE Aerospace and the AIB leads the probe expecting to takemonths. One note about the crash scene. I am amazed by the lack of securing that was done. Footage of the location shows firet trucks driving over a wing. People everywhere. If this was while fire and rescue was happening, I get it. But this lack of security will make the investigation a little harder. I tried to find that footage of the truck driving over the wing, but here’s a an image from that video. Following the crash, several unverified reports about widespread electrical failures on previous flights of the same airliner surfaced on social media, but they have not been verified. The DGCA, India’s FAA equivalent, ordered inspections of all Indian 787s focusing on GENX engines, fuel systems, and FedEx, prompted by a suspected dual engine power loss. Air India inspected nine of the 34787s by June 14th with one-time checks mandated. A committee led by Home Secretary Goven Mohan met on June 16th targeting a report in three months. Boeing’s CEO Kelly Ortberg who left the Paris Air Show sent experts and the Tata chairman called for safety reforms. Preliminary theories include that FedEx failure, which I’m going to get to, flap misconfiguration or pilot error with flight radar 24 showing a 12 second climb, a level off, and then descent. Social media is on fire with all sorts of speculative causes from fuel contamination to dual engine failure to bird strikes to full electrical failure.The first people pointed to bad CCTV footage that flaps were incorrect, which is inconclusive and most likely inaccurate speculation. Then everyone pointed to the deployment of the RAM air turbine, the RAT, which happens in a loss of electrical power. But what investigators are looking deeply into right now is the FedEx system. And so far, not much has been discussed about this. Okay. for non-pilots. The full authority digital engine control, FADC, is a dual channel computer controlling each GX engine’s fuel thrust and ignition and optimizing efficiency through its software. Powered by engine generators, the APU or batteries, it uses sensors for air speed and temperature on the ground with weight on the wheels. WOW is what they call that cuz everybody loves a good acronym. FedEDC runs in ground mode. At takeoff, a WOW switch shifts it to flight mode for the climb. A faulty transition could disrupt thrust, potentially spooling the engines back to idle thrust after the WOW shift. But dual fedc failures are rare due to built-in redundancies. Investigators are probing if a fedc issue during wow shift caused the power loss with FDR data being critical to this. They’ll be looking at electrical corrosion or other possible interferences with the electrical system feeding the fadec computer. The AIB analyzes FDR, CVR, and video data. and FDR could reveal FedEx issues soon while CVR may capture pilot reactions. This data will most likely provide the reason the plane crashed. Vishwash Kumar Ramish, a 40-year-old British national in seat 11A, survived, thrown clear from the emergency exit near the left wing after the plane crashed. In the hospital, he recalled a loud bang suggesting engine or structural failure. But Prime Minister Naharendra Modi visited Romesh on June 13th, who though walked away, still had burns and required medical attention and a stay in the hospital. This footage right here reportedly shows Romesh emerging from the crash and it’s unverified.The crash killed five medical students in the hostile dining hall as well as 28 others on the ground as of this report. Unfortunately, the death toll has been rising. By the time you watch this, it’s sadly probably going to climb. The crash site is 1.24 miles from the runway. Civil Hospital identified 119 victims via DNA so far, releasing 76 bodies by June 16th. Post crash disruptions have surged. On June 14th, 2025, Iran’s airspace closure due to the Israel Iran conflict diverted AI30 London Mumbai to Vienna and AI 102 New York to Delhi to Sharah. On June 16th, AI 315th, a Delhi bound 787-8 from Hong Kong returned 90 minutes after takeoff at 22,000 ft due to a technical issue, but landed safely. That day, AI 180 faced a technical snag in Kolkata at 12:45 a.m., forcing passengers to disembark. And on June 17th, AI 143 Delhi to Paris and AI 142 were cancelled after pre-flight checks. AI 159 Amedad to Gatwick was cancelled on June 17th due to unavailability of aircraft from airspace restrictions and extra checks. On X posts they report delays of 787s trip 7s including a San Francisco Kolkata Mumbai flight grounded in Kolkata affecting Delhi Zurich and Amedad Gatwick roots. Air India’s 2024 ontime performance fell to 60.14% from 86.5% in 2022 reflecting maintenance and scheduling woes. The DGCA’s postc crash 787 inspections completed on nine of Air India’s 34 Dream Liners by June 14th has added strain and potentially worsening their disruptions. For the victims, UK high commissioner Lindy Cameron opened a consular center and Air India offered 2.5 million rupees about 29,000 US per victim’s family plus 10 million from Tatada. Dr. PK Mishra emphasized they needed transparency. A metad holds vigils and the 787’s first crash shakes aviation. Answers hinge on the black boxes. We honor the almost 300 lost and we seek the truth. Finally, investigators will be looking at the miracle of seat 11A. Is there anything that can be done in the future that might increase the chances of passenger survival? When I’ve been around family and friends this past Father’s Day weekend, that was the question on everyone’s mind. How did someone walk away from that? and I tell them the truth. I don’t know. Thanks again and remember, superior judgment trumps superior skills. Stay safe out there.
