Air India Crash Final Report Delay Likely Due to Unfinished Engine Analysis
Final report expected within 3 months after GE engine exam concludes
Mumbai:Even a year after the deadly Air India Boeing 787 crash in Ahmedabad, investigators have reportedly not prepared the final report on the crash as the analysis of the plane's engines in the United States is still awaited.
The GE Aerospace-made engines have been at the centre of the probe into the crash of the Air India plane shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025, which killed 260 people in the world's deadliest air disaster in a decade.
A preliminary report released last year showed the 787's engine fuel control switches moved almost simultaneously from "RUN" to "CUTOFF," starving both engines of fuel shortly after the flight took off. It was the world's first crash involving a 787 Dreamliner, a Boeing model that has been in service since 2011.
According to some reports, the final report could be released within three months. Under international rules, if the final report is delayed, the investigators could issue an interim report.
However, the Federation of Indian Pilots has, according to Reuters, “requested the Indian government and India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) not to come out with any interim report."
"It will cause more speculation and more misunderstanding," C.S. Randhawa, the union's president, told reporters at a packed press conference in Ahmedabad ahead of the anniversary of the crash.
The association previously pushed for investigators to seek more technical data on the plane from Boeing and Air India to allow for a "rebuttal of the pilot suicide theory being explored by the AAIB".
A cockpit recording of dialogue between the two pilots of the Air India 787 before it crashed supported the view that the captain cut the flow of fuel to its engines, according to US officials' early assessment last year.
The AAIB said at the time it was "too early to reach any definite conclusions."
The father of the captain asked the Supreme Court to order an independent investigation that took into account causes other than deliberate pilot action, which has been suspected in some other fatal crashes and confirmed in the case of Germanwings in 2015.
