There is new scrutiny to the plane maker’s safety record

The Indian Airliner and Boeing Dreamliner crashes in 2024: The case of an improperly fastened 787 plane is still pending investigation

The director general of civil aviation told The Associated Press that an Air India flight crashed into a residential area after taking off, five minutes after taking off.

The city with a population of over five million saw smoke billowing from the crash site on television.

India’s Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu posted on X that rescue teams have been mobilized, and all efforts are being made to ensure medical aid and relief support at the site.

The 787 Dreamliner is a widebody, twin-engine plane. This is the first crash ever of a Boeing 787 aircraft, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.

In April 2024, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was investigating claims made by a Boeing engineer who said that sections of the fuselage of the 787 Dreamliner, the model involved in the crash in India on Thursday, were improperly fastened together and could break apart mid-flight after thousands of trips.

As part of the deal, Boeing would still have to admit to obstructing federal oversight, pay a fine, contribute to a fund for the families of the victims and invest in safety and quality programs. Many families of crash victims were opposed to the deal that must still be approved by a judge.

The airplane manufacturer has faced other prominent safety issues. In January 2024, a hole blew open on a Boeing 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight, exposing passengers to forceful winds. Boeing told regulators in August of that year it would redesign the panels to better detect any malfunctions.

Air India’s woes during March 31, 2006, were turning toward a turning point: An empirical analysis of Ortberg’s 737 aircraft

The company released better-than-expected quarterly financial results in April and Kelly Ortberg spoke to his employees about how the year could be a turning point.

It’s not yet known what caused the crash. aviation experts say that they are able to point to questions investigators will likely explore from the plane’s brief flight.

There were casualties on the flight, but it was not known how many. Air India said there were 169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals and one Canadian on the flight. Residents shared several videos showing charred bodies at the site of the crash.

Five medical students had gathered for lunch when the plane hit. Also killed were bystanders — a 15-year-old boy who had delivered lunch to his mother, who ran a nearby roadside stall, and a grandmother who was delivering packed lunches in the company of her 2-year-old granddaughter.

According to a report Friday, the group has faced problems with Air India since they purchased it. Air India’s woes aren’t ending soon: it had to cancel and divert flights after Israel’s overnight strikes on Iran, and a bomb threat on one flight forced the pilots to make an emergency landing in Thailand.

There are concerns regarding the carbon fiber part of the plane. A whistle blower said that parts of the plane were fastened together in a strange way. The longtime Boeing engineer warned that production “shortcuts” could significantly shorten the lifespan of the plane, eventually causing the fuselage to fall apart in mid-flight.

But Boeing pushed back on those allegations. Engineering executives at the company said they had done extensive testing and there were no signs of fatigue in the composite portion of the plane.

The entire fleet of the Boeings was halted for three months after smoldering fires in the cargo hold occurred on two occasions in the same year. Boeing had to craft a workaround and created a metal box to surround the batteries to prevent fires from spreading.

Investigation of the Boeing-Airline Flight 171: Results from the NTSB Investigation via an Interferometric Relativistic Experiment

The National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday morning via  X that the agency will lead a team of U.S. investigators to assist in the crash investigation.

The wing flaps on the plane did not appear extended according to some aviation experts. When taking off the flaps are extended to increase lift and stall speed.

“Perhaps the engines were not putting out the amount of power they needed to be putting out,” Guzzetti said, “although I don’t see smoke or burping or flames coming from the engines. So it could be just a computer programming issue with the engines.”

Boeing and Air India have a long-standing relationship, with the airline taking delivery of its first Boeing jet, a 707-437, in 1960, according to India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation.

Departing early Thursday afternoon local time, Flight 171 used “the full length of Runway 23 at Ahmedabad,” having “backtracked to the end of the runway before beginning its take off roll,” Flightradar 24 said via Bluesky.

In the past week alone, the airliner had completed at least 11 international trips, with destinations ranging from Paris and Frankfurt to Melbourne and Tokyo, according to the tracking site Flightradar 24.

The 11-year-old jet had accumulated more than 41,000 hours of flying time, and almost 8,000 takeoffs and landings, which is average for an aircraft of its age, according to Cirium.

Flight 171 was a 787-8, registered as VT-ANB. The plane was delivered to Air India on Jan. 28, 2004, according to data from a firm called Cirium.

“It just appears to me that the airplane is unable to climb,” former National Transportation Safety Board investigator Jeff Guzzetti told NPR, reacting to videos that apparently captured the moments before the crash. “It was able to take off from the runway and get up to 500 feet, but it just wasn’t able to climb after that.”

Investigation into the Thursday Air India crash in which 1 passenger survived: An Indian aviation safety expert complains about the country’s airports’ lack of safety culture

The tragedy comes amid India’s ambitions to be a global transportation hub, and as the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi builds airports across regional centers at breakneck speed. The official Airline Guide has data on the third-largest domestic market in India, according to News On Air.

But Indian aviation safety expert Amit Singh, a former pilot, told NPR that even as the industry is expanding, the safety culture is lacking. Singh said the main issue was the relationship with the regulators. There is a lack of trust.

“People who are in the safety [industry] were not surprised — because they were expecting something big to happen,” Singh said of Thursday’s accident. “Something … does not happen out of the blue, there are always precursors to it — you’ll have small incidents, then major incidents, then a big accident.”

He referred to a plane crash in India in 2020, when a plane skidded off a runway, killing 21 people, and accidents at flight schools. “Then suddenly, you have this,” he said.

Many of India’s airports did not follow safety standards to make sure there are no big obstacles near airports, according to a safety expert. Thursday’s accident, in which the plane crash into the six-story building seconds after take off, he referred to. “Such a tall building, very close to the takeoff path, just 300 meters [980 feet] from the compound wall, may be a serious violation,” he said.

Ranganathan accused India’s aviation watchdog of giving “licenses without proper checking, and the [government run] airport authority keeps violating, because India has one of the weakest judiciaries as far as aviation safety is concerned. They’ll never give a verdict against the government agencies.”

“If this doesn’t wake them up, nothing will. Mumbai is a time bomb that is waiting to happen because of its densely populated informal settlements, he said.

Source: Indian authorities begin investigating Air India crash in which 1 passenger survived

Investigation of Thursday’s Air India crash: A witness’s walk out of a burning rubble with the assistance of the Tata Group

NPR contacted India’s civil aviation authority, the federal aviation minister, Air India, and its corporate owners but did not hear back.

Chandrasekaran said the company took “its responsibility to society seriously, and that includes being open about what occurred yesterday.” The Tata Group also said it would provide more than $100,000 to the families of each victim, and offered to cover medical care for the wounded.

The people of the state of Gujarat, where Ahmedabad is the capital, have long sought their fortunes abroad, and it was clear in the roster of victims who’d been on the flight: a man who surprised his father with a visit over the Muslim holiday of Eid; another who was returning home after attending his father’s funeral. There was a single mother returning to her nursing job in the U.K.

The US National Transportation Safety Board and British investigators are assisting the India’s aircraft accident investigation bureau in the investigation of Thursday’s deadly Air India crash. The black box of the plane was found on the roof of the crash site. “This marks an important step forward in the investigation. The Civil Aviation Minister posted Friday that this would help with the inquiry into the incident.

The passenger who was seated in seat 11A was the only one to walk out of the burning rubble after the plane crashed into a medical college in the northwestern Indian state of Gujarat.

The surviving passenger, 40-year-old British citizen Vishwaskumar Ramesh, was hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries, shortly after he walked out of the crash site. In footage shared by local media, he was seen bloodied, dazed and clutching his mobile phone.

He walked out, he told The Hindu. From his hospital bed, he told other media that after the plane crashed, he managed to push aside the emergency exit door. I can’t explain, it’s a miracle. His brother was killed when he was a few seats away.