Only an exhaustive probe will bring out the real reasons behind the crash of another plane made by a company that is increasingly gaining notoriety for dubious safety not only in aircraft but in flights of spacecraft too
Flying is safer than crossing the street. India’s worst aviation incident in recent history, which took lives not only of those seated in the plane but also of medical students in their college hostel and others on the street, does not change the perception of safety even if it does alter the statistical chances of a person dying in an air crash a bit.
What we need to know in this horrifying loss of lives is why did Air India’s Boeing 787-8 lose altitude so shortly after take-off. Was it a bird hit, erroneous flying, aviation fuel contamination or fuel starvation behind the critical loss of thrust from both engines as suggested by the landing gear still being down and bad configuration of the air flaps while the plane was climbing while airborne for less than a minute after taking off from Ahmedabad?
Only an exhaustive probe will bring out the real reasons behind the crash of another plane made by a company that is increasingly gaining notoriety for dubious safety not only in aircraft but in flights of spacecraft too. Not for a minute should it be assumed that Boeing’s old safety record governs fitting planes these days like this 11-year-old aircraft was in the Seattle facility even if it had previously taken off or landed 8,000 times during 41,000 flying hours and is the first ever Dreamliner to crash.
There will be no shortage of leading questions as investigators and probe panels try to fix the exact reasons why this blip in aviation safety occurred. And they will have so much to investigate from different angles though the commander had logged more than 8,000 flying hours and there was no sign of the plane having broken up in midair to suggest any extraneous threat like terror.
A plethora of incidents and issues have plagued the plane maker, including a door plug blowing out midair leaving a hole in the fuselage and fatal crashes like the one in South Korea in Dec. 2024 in which 179 passengers and crew died. Yet, it would only be fair to say that finger pointing can wait until all the facts are in along with the two black boxes and those facts are sifted professionally.
A full review of the Dreamliner, including the option of grounding the fleet for them to undergo safety checks, may have to be undertaken regardless of how expensive they prove as Air India has about three dozen of them in operation and even if the airline, a pioneer of aviation in the country, may have followed all protocols faithfully in its operational engineering practices.
While investigators probe and aviation experts ponder, let us not forget the graveness of the tragedy of those innocents on the ground, many of whom were young people studying for a career in saving lives in the medical field and some on the streets around the area in which the doctors’ hostel was situated dying for no reason except that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Considering how many people die on Indian highways every day and regularly falling off crowded suburban trains, flying is till the safest mode of transportation and statistics bear that out. But to reassure those rendered nervous by the visuals of this airliner dropping soon after take-off, all personnel on the multiple probes must find the reasons so that corrective action can be taken.
There is a huge amount of work to be done for India to shape up to being one of the fastest growing passenger aviation markets with sufficient trained pilots, air traffic controllers and maintenance engineers to try and ensure that the safety lessons learnt from tragedies like the Ahmedabad crash do not go in vain.
