Amid mounting public and political attention on last month’s fatal Air India crash in Ahmedabad, Union Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu on Monday, July 21, confirmed that investigators have successfully decoded the black box data from the ill-fated aircraft.
Addressing the Rajya Sabha, the Union Minister said that the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is conducting a thorough, rule-based, and unbiased probe into the June 12 crash of Air India flight AI171, which went down shortly after takeoff, killing all crew members onboard.
“AAIB has been successful in decoding data from black box of Air India plane that crashed last month. AAIB follows definitive, rule-based process, totally unbiased in probing Air India plane crash. We want to stand with truth, not anything else. We want to find out what exactly happened in Air India plane crash, that will come out only after AAIB final probe report,” Naidu stated, emphasizing that the government is committed to uncovering the truth, and will await the final report before drawing conclusions.
He added, “I have seen multiple articles, not only by the Indian media, but also by the Western media trying to promote their own viewpoint. The way we are seeing the investigation is through facts. We want to stand by the truth. And that will only be revealed when the investigation is complete,” Naidu said amid hectic sloganeering by the opposition.
According to preliminary findings from a 15-page interim report, both engines of the aircraft experienced a near-simultaneous fuel supply cut-off, within the span of a second. This sudden event reportedly triggered chaos in the cockpit, with cockpit voice recordings capturing one pilot asking the other why fuel was cut – only for the other to deny doing so.
The crash remains under active investigation, with aviation safety authorities, technical experts, and regulators closely monitoring AAIB’s next steps.
