Air India says one engine on crashed plane was new
One of the engines of the Air India plane that crashed last week was new, while the other was not due for servicing until December, the airline's chairman has said.
In an interview with an Indian news channel, N Chandrasekaran said that both engines of the aircraft had 'clean' histories. '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,' he told Times Now channel. At least 270 people, most of them passengers, were killed last Thursday when AI171, a London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, crashed less than a minute after taking off from Ahmedabad airport in western India.
Investigators are now sifting through debris and decoding recorded flight data and cockpit audio to reconstruct the flight's final moments and determine the cause of the incident. (Agencies)
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Qatar Tribune
a day ago
- Qatar Tribune
Air India says one engine on crashed plane was new
One of the engines of the Air India plane that crashed last week was new, while the other was not due for servicing until December, the airline's chairman has said. In an interview with an Indian news channel, N Chandrasekaran said that both engines of the aircraft had 'clean' histories. '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,' he told Times Now channel. At least 270 people, most of them passengers, were killed last Thursday when AI171, a London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, crashed less than a minute after taking off from Ahmedabad airport in western India. Investigators are now sifting through debris and decoding recorded flight data and cockpit audio to reconstruct the flight's final moments and determine the cause of the incident. (Agencies)
Qatar Tribune
6 days ago
- Qatar Tribune
Co-pilot error suspected in new Air India crash theory
The co-pilot of Air India Flight AI171 may have made a fatal error, causing the crash that killed 241 people onboard and dozens more on the ground, an aviation expert has claimed. Captain Steve Scheibner, a veteran commercial airline pilot, claims the London Gatwick-bound 787 Dreamliner co-pilot may have been asked to retract the landing gear but pulled the wrong lever and instead raised the flaps. The former American Airlines pilot's claims, broadcast on his YouTube channel, came as it emerged air accident investigators in India were planning to interview pilots and crew who had flown in the plane in the week leading up to the crash. It is hoped they may hold clues as to why the plane crashed just minutes after take off from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, on June 12. Meanwhile, investigators are understood to have begun decoding the black box's flight data to try to establish exactly what happened before the crash. Scheibner believes a simple catastrophic error may have caused the plane to plunge from the sky. 'Here's what I think happened, again folks this is just my opinion,' he said. 'I think the pilot flying said to the co-pilot 'gear up' at the appropriate time. I think the co-pilot grabbed the flap handle and raised the flaps, instead of the gear. 'If that happened, this explains a lot of why this aeroplane stopped flying.' He explained how the wings would normally bend during take-off as the lift forces it into the air. But video footage appears to not show that happening, fuelling speculation that the flaps, used to help lift the plane, had been retracted. The landing gear also remained down, despite it being normal procedure to lift them within a few seconds of clearing the tarmac. (Agencies)
Al Jazeera
13-06-2025
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‘I realised I was alive': Sole survivor of Air India crash recounts tragedy
The only survivor of the Air India plane crash says he couldn't believe he made it out alive after escaping from a broken emergency exit in a deadly crash that killed 241 people. Shortly after Thursday's crash, social media footage showed Viswashkumar Ramesh limping down the street in a blood-stained t-shirt and with bruises on his body. The British national was sitting in seat 11A on the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner that was flying in to London when the plane crashed into a medical college hostel moments after taking off from India's northwestern city of Ahmedabad. Ramesh, 40, told India's national broadcaster DD News from his hospital bed on Friday that he thought he was 'also going to die'. 'But when I opened my eyes, I realised I was alive and I tried to unbuckle myself from the seat and escape from where I could. It was in front of my eyes that the air hostess and others [died],' he said. He was travelling with his brother Ajay, who had been seated in a different row, members of his family said. 'The side of the plane I was in landed on the ground, and I could see that there was space outside the aircraft, so when my door broke, I tried to escape through it and I did,' Ramesh said. 'The opposite side of the aircraft was blocked by the building wall so nobody could have come out of there,' he added. He explained that the plane had seemed to have come to a standstill midair for a few seconds shortly after taking off and felt the engine thrust, which later 'crashed with speed into the hostel'. Ramesh's cousin Hiren Kantilal, 19, told the AFP news agency that he called his family in Leicester, in the East Midlands in England, after the crash to tell them he was alive. 'Our plane has been crashed,' Ramesh told his dad, according to his cousin. 'He was bleeding all over him, in the face and everything, and he said, 'I am just waiting for my brother and I don't know how I get out of the plane.' 'He said: 'Do not worry about me, try to find about Ajay Kumar' and he said: 'I am totally fine.'' Kantilal said his cousin had spent about 10 to 15 minutes seeking his brother, and then was whisked away to hospital by the rescue services. 'We are happy Vishwash has been saved, but on the other hand, we are just heartbroken about Ajay,' he told AFP. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the crash site on Friday and met Ramesh at the hospital. Rescue workers continued to search for missing people and aircraft parts on Friday following the worst aviation crash in a decade.
