Hot afternoon of 12th June 2025. A gleaming Boeing 171 Dreamliner moves towards the sky from Ahmedabad Airport, in which a total of 242 people were aboard. Exactly 32 seconds after takeoff, something happens in the air that no one had imagined. Both the powerful engines suddenly become completely dead. A pilot in the cockpit yells – ‘Why did you stop the engine?’ The other says, ‘I didn’t do it!’ And the next moment… devastation! Today, a full year has passed since this horrific accident, but the biggest truth of the aviation industry has still not come to light?
In the world of aviation there is an international regulation called ICAO Annex-13. According to this, the final black box investigation report of any major plane crash should be made available to the world within exactly 12 months, so that such accidents can be prevented in future. Today air india It is the first anniversary of the crash of flight AI-171. After all, what corporate pressure was behind this delay? Let us understand this whole thing as ‘clear cut’ with facts.
That last journey of flight 171
This entire matter has to be understood from its chronology. On that afternoon of June 12 last year, Air India flight 171 was scheduled to depart from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport for London’s Gatwick Airport. There were 230 passengers on board, which included 161 Indians and 53 British citizens. The highly experienced Captain Sumeet Sabharwal was commanding the cockpit and along with him was First Officer Clive Kunder. Everything was absolutely normal.
Air traffic control gives the green signal, the plane runs onto the runway and takes off in the air. But within just 32 seconds this luxurious Dreamliner crashes into the hostel block of BJ Medical College, Ahmedabad. In this horrific crash, 241 people inside the plane and 19 innocent people on the ground, i.e. a total of 260 people lose their lives. Initial CCTV footage shows that there was no external blast in the plane, it flew normally, but instead of suddenly increasing its height, it hung in the air and glided and fell straight down.
The biggest suspense of cockpit voice recorder
Just a month after the accident, in July 2025, the AAIB released its 15-page preliminary report. As soon as this report came, there was a stir in the aviation industry of the entire world. The report did not directly blame anyone, but two short paragraphs gave rise to a terrifying theory. The data revealed that shortly after takeoff, the ‘fuel control switches’ of both the aircraft’s engines, which are normally used to start the engines before take-off and shut them down after landing, had suddenly moved from the ‘run’ position to the ‘cutoff’ position. That means the fuel supply to the engines was cut off in the air itself.
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An even more sensational thing came out from the cockpit voice recorder. In the recording, one pilot is clearly asking the other, ‘Why did you cut the fuel supply?’ To this the second pilot immediately replies, ‘I did not do this at all.’ But without clarifying whose voices these were, international media like ‘Newsweek’ and ‘The Wall Street Journal’ started running the narrative that perhaps the pilot had deliberately taken this suicidal step. American experts also immediately gave a statement that this was not a fault of the plane or engine, but the act of a human being inside the cockpit.
Rescue of pilots and theory of system failure
But is the truth so simple? The Federation of Indian Pilots, which represents about 6 thousand pilots of India, described this initial report as completely compromised and biased. Giving a very sharp statement, Federation President Captain CS Randhawa said that when a pilot is alive, he can defend himself, but when the pilot dies, then all the agencies come together to save the manufacturing company and put the entire blame on the pilot.
Captain Sumeet’s 91-year-old father Pushkar Raj Sabharwal approached the Supreme Court of India against this narrative. Considering the sensitivity of this matter, the Supreme Court also gave clear instructions that until the investigation is completed, the flight crew cannot be made a scapegoat. Safety campaigners and American whistleblower organization ‘Foundation for Aviation Safety’ completely rejected this theory of Boeing. The head of this organization, Ed Pearson, while presenting the documents, claimed that the aircraft that was the victim of the accident, whose registration number was VT-ANB, had a very poor electrical track record.
So was it a technical fault that stopped the engines?
Now let’s talk about that technical aspect, which raises serious questions on the claims of Boeing and engine manufacturing company GE Aerospace. According to investigative journalists and aviation engineers, there was a known fault in the plane’s ‘core network’, which is called the plane’s central nervous system, even before the flight. One theory says that just after takeoff, a major electrical failure occurred in the plane’s main computer, causing the systems to reboot. Due to this reboot, the plane’s software got the illusion for a few seconds that the plane was still on the ground, even though it was in the air. The system considered the high thrust as a malfunction and generated an automatic command to cut off the fuel supply to both the engines. That means the pilots did not even touch those buttons, rather the computer itself took this fatal decision.
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Apart from this, the biggest evidence is the opening of the RAM Air Turbine i.e. RAT. It is a small propeller that opens with air pressure to provide hydraulic power to the aircraft if main power fails. CCTV footage showed that the rat had opened immediately after takeoff. Initial reports say that the Rat started working within 5 seconds of the engine being switched off. But simulator tests of the Boeing 787 show that the Rat takes 14 to 18 seconds to become fully active. This clearly means that the malfunction in the plane had started long before the fuel switch was closed, probably while it was running on the runway.
Walkway to Life: The Miraculous Story of the Sole Survivor
In this horrific plane crash, there was one person who came out alive from the jaws of death. His name is Vishwas Kumar Ramesh, 40 year old Vishwas is a British citizen. Who that day was sitting on his window seat number 11A, which was very close to the forward emergency exit row of the plane. As soon as the plane hit the building of BJ Medical College, there was a massive explosion in the central fuel tank present in its wings. But as luck would have it, at that very second of the impact, the part of the aircraft’s fuselage between the main fuel tank and the cockpit, i.e. right in front of Row 11, completely separated.
This structural split protected seat number 11A from the tremendous impact force that crushed the front seats. Moreover, the broken wall of the cabin stopped the fireballs from reaching them for a few moments. Without wasting any time, Vishwas jumped out of the way of the torn debris and came out safely with minor burns. But the price of this miracle was very heavy. His younger brother Ajay Kumar Ramesh, who was sitting right next to him on seat 11J, was killed in this accident. Today, Vishwas Kumar Ramesh is suffering from severe mental trauma, survivor’s guilt and insomnia in Leicester, England. His UK based lawyer Rad Seager is now fighting a major legal battle against Air India and Boeing in international courts.
Compensation disputes and internal differences
How complicated this investigation has become can be gauged from the fact that Captain RS Sandhu, the most senior expert of AAIB’s Flight Operations Group and a veteran Boeing 787 pilot, has stopped attending the investigation meetings since January this year. According to reports, he had serious differences with other officials regarding the transparency and facts of the investigation. On the other hand, Air India is giving an additional cash compensation of Rs 10 to 20 lakh to the families of the victims and getting them to sign an ‘indemnity clause’. This clause means that if the family takes this money, then it cannot sue Air India or Boeing in the international courts of America or Britain in future. Lawyers for the victims’ families have called this an oppressive and intimidating strategy by Air India, because under the Montreal Convention 1999, if a technical fault is proven, Air India’s financial liability becomes unlimited and it will have to pay crores of rupees in damages.
Corporate houses can lobby to save their reputation, they can suppress the truth for some time by playing with billions of rupees, but the screams of the families left behind of the 260 lives that were destroyed that afternoon are still waiting for justice.
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