Air India ‘black box’ retrieved as crash investigation starts

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Investigators into the causes of India’s worst civil aviation disaster in almost three decades have found a “black box” flight recorder from the Air India flight for London that crashed in Ahmedabad, killing all but one of 242 people on board.

Civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu said in a social media post that the recovery of the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner’s flight recorder on Friday marked “an important step forward” that would “significantly aid the enquiry into the incident”.

The device, which records cockpit voices and flight data, was retrieved from the rooftop of a student hostel building where the plane crashed, said an aviation industry official, who asked not to be identified.

Indian civil aviation authorities on Friday ordered additional maintenance checks on Air India’s fleet of Boeing 787-8 and 787-9 aircraft after Prime Minister Narendra Modi toured the site of the disaster and visited survivors being treated in hospital.

The government’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation body required additional inspections and tests of the Boeing aircraft that included checks of their oil and hydraulic systems “as a preventive measure”.

Air India did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the order.

Naidu, the civil aviation minister, said the government was launching a “fair and thorough investigation” to get to the “depth of why this incident has happened”. Air India on Friday said it was “giving its full co-operation to the authorities”.

Video footage showed Modi on Friday viewing the wreckage of the plane and damaged buildings at the student hostel compound.

“The scene of devastation is saddening,” Modi wrote in a social media post. “Our thoughts remain with those who lost their loved ones in this unimaginable tragedy.”

Air India on Friday confirmed all but one of the 230 passengers and 12 crew on board were killed. “The passengers comprised 169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, seven Portuguese nationals and one Canadian national. The survivor is a British national of Indian origin,” the airline said.

The prime minister also visited victims of the disaster in hospital, including the sole survivor, identified by Indian officials as Viswash Kumar Ramesh, who had been seated near an emergency exit.

Ramesh told Indian state media DD News he escaped from the crashed plane through an opening in its fuselage. “I managed to unbuckle myself, used my leg to push through that opening, and crawled out,” he said in an interview at his hospital bed.

Ramesh said lights inside the jet “started flickering” shortly after take-off and within five to 10 seconds, it felt like the plane was “stuck in the air” before it crashed and exploded.

Forensic teams were examining wreckage overnight at the state-run BJ Medical College, which the plane hit while students were having lunch. Mangled parts of aircraft were spread across hundreds of metres.

The Federation of All India Medical Association said four students at the medical college had been killed along with six relatives of resident doctors. At least one person on the ground outside the building was also killed.

Home affairs minister Amit Shah late on Thursday said an official death toll would be released after the victims had been identified with DNA samples.

Videos showed the plane losing altitude shortly after take-off, before it exploded in a fireball.

“We have to wait and see what comes out of the black box,” said Jitender Bhargava, a former Air India executive director and author of the book The Descent of Air India. “The pilots must have spoken in the cockpit before the tragedy.”

Experts have raised questions about the position of the plane’s wing flaps when it crashed, the thrust being generated by its engines and why its landing gear remained down.

“Those recorders will tell the story,” said John Cox, an aviation safety consultant and pilot. “We are talking days — they will have the preliminary download within a week.”

Cox said the videos were not clear enough to see whether the airliner’s wing flaps, which increase lift, were extended. The plane’s flight profile was also unusual, he said, noting “the nose is up, as is usual, yet it is descending”.

The Dreamliner’s recorders will have information on flap positions and engine performance. The plane has a “take-off warning system” that alerts pilots if it is not configured properly, Cox said.

The crash was a major setback for flag carrier Air India, which was bought by conglomerate Tata Group in 2022. The formerly state-owned group is midway through a five-year turnaround that includes the replacement or refurbishment of its older jets.

The last fatal plane crash in India, the world’s third-largest aviation market, was five years ago. A Boeing 737 from Air India Express, the airline’s low-cost unit, skidded off the runway in Kozhikode and plunged into a valley, killing 21 people.

India’s worst-ever civil aviation disaster was the 1996 mid-air collision between a Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 and a Kazakhstan Airlines Ilyushin Il-76 that killed all 349 people across both aircraft.