By Vipul Tamhane
The skies over Ahmedabad darkened, not from clouds, but because of tragedy, in a single moment. On June 12, 2025, Air India Flight AI171 took off from the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad aboard a Boeing 787 Dreamliner and crashed into the hostel block of B J Medical College in Meghani Nagar less than a minute later. It was a disaster that has left a nation heartbroken and an industry stunned.
The aircraft was just 625 feet off the ground and had made a frantic "mayday" call, as it lost contact with the air traffic control, and moments later plunged into a neighborhood, exploding in a fireball. Of the 242 on board, 230 passengers and 12 crew, 241 died. A single man, a British citizen named Vishwashkumar Ramesh from seat 11A, miraculously survived.
On the ground, 28 more died, and over 60 were hurt, including students and a pregnant woman. The final count is 269 dead. This is not simply a tragic accident. It is a systemic failure of technology, regulation, and perhaps even accountability, and it requires timely answers.
This is also the first time for a fatal crash of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a model introduced in 2009 that was considered the biggest innovation in aviation since its introduction, and its reputation is now deeply stained. Eyewitness information records are very disturbing: an explosion, thick smoke, flame, and destruction raining down on an urban locality. The heavier the fuel stored in that aircraft, the more the inferno raged following the crash.
The investigators have since recovered the black boxes: the flight data recorders and the cockpit voice recorders. There is an international investigation headed by the Indian authorities with technical assistance from teams hailing from the US and the UK. Initial theories range from flap malfunction, loss of engine, or control anomalies. Whatever the cause is, the crash happened practically immediately after takeoff, which means that whatever went wrong, it happened fast and with devastating effect.
What brings us to the major question: How does a state-of-the-art aircraft break in the air just seconds after being airborne? The answer could possibly be both technological and legal/regulatory/accountability complex. Under international aviation law, Boeing, as the manufacturer, would be liable if the investigation finds defective design or construction. This will invoke the Montreal Convention of 1999, applicable in compensation peculiar to international aviation. It dictates that families of victims are entitled to compensation in amounts predetermined at the base level, claiming irrespective of fault, and higher settlements are allowed in cases where negligence-failure is proved. In this case, claims could be filed against Boeing not only by grieving families but also by insurers, Air India, and maybe even authorities.
However, Boeing is not the only focal point.
Air India must now address concerns regarding the lease structure involving the operation of the very aircraft by Tata Group. Leasing of aircraft is common for airlines, which are generally in the form of three, viz. Wet Lease (which provides the whole aircraft, crew, maintenance, and insurance), Dry Lease (only the aircraft, no crew), and Damp Lease (maintenance and insurance but no crew). If, in fact, Flight AI171 was dry-leased, responsibility for maintenance and airworthiness would rest solely upon Air India.
Maintenance, while frequently out of the public eye, is the foundation of aviation safety. Modern aircraft are incredibly complicated and require ongoing maintenance, including component replacements, systems checks and updates, and even software upgrades. When airlines manage aircraft, they typically pre-buy what are called "maintenance reserves" for anticipated maintenance. It will be important to know if Air India complied with its obligations with respect to maintenance reserves, especially an 11- or 12-year-old aircraft at a higher susceptibility to fatigue, for the liability.
The industry must also investigate if wider cost pressures led to lapses or opportunistic inattention during the routine maintenance cycle. Historically, there is very rarely a single cause for a major aviation disaster. Disasters are more often caused by the accumulation of several smaller errors that are all manageable when not connected, each survivable in isolation, but fatal when combined.
This disaster is now forcing India's aviation safety culture to be examined. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the nation's safety regulator, is already under pressure to increase oversight measures. As the country ambitiously expands its aviation profile, it has to ensure its safety measures follow the same pace of change. Unannounced audit measures, transparent reporting measures for incidents, and access to maintenance logs cannot remain as luxuries. They must all now be considered a necessity.
The DGCA should actively implement new regulations by mandating regular independent safety audits, enforcing strict lease oversight, creating a national compensation fund for victims of crashes, and promoting worldwide cooperation on aircraft certification and safety data to improve all aviation networks.
At the same time, international aviation should learn lessons from AI171. Dreamliners continue to fly all over the world, every day, and if a systemic design or systemic software failure is the reason we are grappling with this tragedy, we need all of these aircraft to be inspected globally as soon as possible, regardless of or with no evidence of wrongdoing.
So, we need to consider how, and for what reason, we take so long to take protective action, and similarly, how we take as long once [Canada Transportation Safety Board's investigation is complete to enact recommendations.
Lessons learned from past failures, historically, like the Air France 447 disaster and the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 disaster, are that being "too slow" costs lives in the long run. To be fair, we can see how some manufacturers perform differently across different safety metrics, for example, despite the 201 total accidents Boeing has been identified in (largely related to their global fleet, of course), compared to Airbus's 42 accidents and a fatality rate of only 1 per incident - the fatality difference is systemic, considered as a thoughtful difference in considerations of design, control, and operating conditions.
While around a dozen accidents can be understood as employing legacy aircraft from McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed, it appears that entirely new entrants such as Mitsubishi haven’t necessarily proven aircraft as a fleet to the same degree of unprecedented hash events, and unknowns arise once figuring out aircraft safety in an aviation system.
In the days following the tragedy, the Tata Group and Air India have responded to the families of the victims in some ways, providing financial compensation, offering crisis hotlines for the bereaved, and reimbursing travel for those attending funerals. These responses are appropriate, but fall far short. Grieving families need more than financial compensation; they need accountability, they need transparency, and they need change. Only then can we even begin to comprehend a tragedy for which no words suffice.
Once the city of Ahmedabad goes from mourning to building, and families from different sides of the world prepare for funerals that never should have happened, the world needs to remember what this is: a moment of reckoning. This is not just an accident. This is failure, technological, procedural, moral, or some combination of it all.
And for the 269 people lost, for the only survivor who will endure an unimaginable life-long scar, and for all the future passengers who will ever again trust a boarding pass, there needs to be answers. Let this moment be when aviation chooses truth over damage control, systemic reform over talk, and human life over profits.
Because this cannot happen again.
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(The author is a counter-terrorism expert and governance consultant.)
The views expressed are not necessarily those of The South Asian Times
