Revealed: Air India plane had recently been fitted with new engine

The Air India plane that crashed and killed at least 270 people last week had one of its engines recently replaced, the airline's chairman has revealed. Flight AI171 crashed less than a minute after taking off from the Indian city of Ahmedabad last Thursday, striking a medical college hostel and killing 241 of the 242 people on board and dozens more on the ground.
In an interview with an Indian news channel, Air India chairman N. Chandrasekaran said that both engines of the aircraft had 'clean' histories. He said: 'The right engine was a new engine put in March 2025. The left engine was last serviced in 2023 and due for its next maintenance check in December 2025.' As investigators sift through debris and decode the flight data from the plane's blackboxes, both of which were recovered this week, Chandrasekaran urged the public not to speculate on what caused the crash.
'There are a lot of speculations and a lot of theories. But the fact that I know so far is this particular aircraft, this specific tail, AI171, has a clean history. 'I am told by all the experts that the black box and recorders will definitely tell the story. So, we just have to wait for that.' It comes as the sole survivor of the crash, 40-year-old British national Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, admitted he was overcome with survivor's guilt after his brother Ajay died on the same flight .
Vishwash said: 'It's a miracle I survived. I am OK physically but I feel terrible that I could not save Ajay.' He said he had tried to book two seats next to each other on flight AI171, which crashed into a densely populated part of the city of Ahmedabad shortly after takeoff. But by the time he came to make the reservation, he was forced to pick two seats apart from each other in row 11.
Vishwash said: 'If we had been sat together we both might have survived. 'I tried to get two seats together but someone had already got one. Me and Ajay would have been sitting together. 'But I lost my brother in front of my eyes. So now I am constantly thinking 'Why can't I save my brother?' Vishwash, who was sitting next to one of the plane's emergency exits, was able to crawl through a hole in the twisted fuselage of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

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