Airplane Crash in India

 

Airplane Crash in India:

On 12-JUN-2025, airplane crash in Ahmedabad:

The tragic aircraft tragedy claimed the lives of all 241 passengers and crew members on board a passenger airliner that was on its route from Ahmedabad, India, to London. The occurrence has shocked people all around the world and brought up serious issues regarding emergency procedures, aviation safety, and the potential causes of the catastrophe.

Within a minute of taking off, Air India Flight AI171, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner that was traveling from Ahmedabad to Gatwick Airport in London, crashed. The collision happened in Ahmedabad's crowded Meghani Nagar neighborhood. There were 242 people on the flight: 230 passengers, 2 pilots, and 10 staff members. Passengers and young medical students from Meghani Nagar, Ahmedabad, are among the dead. Their premature passing has been seen as a significant loss for their families as well as for the future of the country.  

(230 passengers, 2 pilots, and 10 cabin crew members)

It marks the first time a 787-8 Dreamliner has suffered a fatal crash since it entered commercial service in 2011. The 787-8 Dreamliner was flown by Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and his co-pilot, Clive Kundar. The two were highly experienced, with Mr Sabharwal reportedly having earned more than 22 years of expertise as a commercial airline pilot and over 8,000 flying hours.  Almost immediately after take-off the cockpit gave a mayday call, India's aviation regulator said. No response was given by the aircraft after that. It's unclear what prompted the mayday call, but the flight's sole survivor has told Indian media that he heard a loud bang as the plane struggled to gain altitude.

Boeing crashes history:

The issues started in early 2013 when two Japanese carriers' Dreamliners caught fire. One plane was just departing Japan and had to turn around and land, while the other had just touched down at Logan Airport in Boston. The cause of both fires was determined to be the overheating of the lithium-ion batteries that supply power to the aircraft's electrical system. Rapid action was taken by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which grounded the Dreamliners' global fleet and temporarily stopped delivering new ones to airlines that had ordered them.  Boeing's improvements, which included improved battery insulation and a stainless steel box to contain the batteries and keep smoke or flames from entering into the aircraft in the case of a fire, were approved by the FAA in April 2013. Within weeks of the FAA's ruling, the Dreamliners were given the all-clear to fly and the business was permitted to start delivering again.

The next incident happened in 2019 when John Barnett, a former quality manager who retired in 2017, disclosed that he had filed a whistleblower complaint alleging careless work around the wires connecting the planes’ flight control systems, with metal shavings left behind when bolts were fastened. This was covered by The New York Times in an exposé at the time.  There was a chance that the shavings would pierce the insulation of the wires, with "catastrophic" results, as Barnett described them.

 Additionally, Barnett said that 787s were being fitted with faulty or damaged parts, such as a dented hydraulic tube that a senior management had taken out of a bag that was meant to hold scrap. According to the Times, the FAA examined a number of 787s that were purportedly free of the shavings Barnett identified and discovered that they were in fact there. Before the aircraft were delivered to customers, the FAA then mandated that Boeing fix the issues.

Barnett filed a lawsuit against Boeing after he retired, claiming that the firm had slanded him and prevented him from advancing in his career while he was working there. Boeing disputes these claims. When he was discovered dead in his truck in March 2024 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, he was working on his case in North Charleston, South Carolina, which was the location of the plant  Where he was employed.In a wrongful death case, Barnett's family stated that "Boeing may not have pulled the trigger, but Boeing's conduct was the clear cause." 

Boeing avoided the accusation by stating in a statement that it was "sadened by John Barnett's death and send our condolences to his family."
Other than Barnett's passing, last year was a poor year for Boeing and the Dreamliner. Another whistleblower, engineer Sam Salehpour, came out in January, claiming that parts of the Dreamliner's fuselage were not correctly joined, leaving gaps that may have caused the aircraft to fragment while in flight. Salehpour said that workers would use physical force when the parts didn't fit.Salehpour testified on Capitol Hill, saying, "I literally saw people jumping on the pieces of the airplane to get them to align." Jumping up and down causes pieces to distort, temporarily aligning the holes. The Tarzan effect is what I dubbed it.

Boeing defended the Dreamliner's integrity in a statement posted on its website: "With FAA oversight, our engineers are conducting a thorough analysis to determine any long-term inspection and maintenance required, and based on comprehensive analysis, no safety issues have been identified related to composite gap management for the in-service fleet." 

The FAA took further action in May, however, declaring that Boeing was required to conduct a new inspection of "all 787 airplanes still within the production system and must also create a plan to address the in-service fleet." The government had already taken efforts to address the issue of intolerable gaps in the Dreamliner's fuselage. The FAA stopped delivering new Dreamliners to airline clients between May 2021 and August 2022 in order to address the issue. As Salehpour testified, deliveries did resume, but the subpar work on the manufacturing floor also did.