S Raghotham
A petition seeking an independent, court-monitored investigation into the AI171 crash in Ahmedabad last June was stalled yet again on Tuesday with the Solicitor General of India seeking another week’s time to submit a progress report on the Aircraft Accidents Investigation Board (AAIB) probe. On 11 February, he had promised to submit the same at the next hearing, which the court had set for March 24. Interestingly, a day before the SG’s assurance, an intriguing report by Leonard Berberi, a journalist specialising in aviation, had appeared in Milan-based newspaper Corriere della Sera. Since the crash, Berberi has run a stream of stories, citing unnamed “Western sources”, pushing a single line: the crash was the result of deliberate pilot action. Berberi’s 10 February report claimed that the AAIB had been forced to come around to the same view – “the desired turn ing point” as per his sources – under pressure and “Western” threats of a re-evaluation of the level of safety of India’s airlines. Berberi’s sources told him that the conclusion would be subject to a “political evaluation” at the highest levels in India. AAIB officials had reportedly even discussed with American counterparts how to write the final report without triggering “national controversies”. Taken together with earlier leak-driven reporting in the Wall Street Journal, even as the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Boeing officials publicly maintain silence, citing ICAO rules, it is clear that this investigation was never just about finding out what happened to AI171. It has become part of a geopolitical power play between India and the US.
The AAIB’s preliminary report of July 2025 carried the imprint of this tension. It laid out a sequence of the AI171 crash: three seconds after take-off, both fuel switches transitioned from “run” to “cut off” within a second of each other, starving the engines, leading to the crash. Then it put out a tantalising paraphrased piece of conversation in which one pilot asks the other “why did he cut off” and the other replies he “did not do so.” It also referred to a 2018 FAA advisory regarding the fuel switches, to suggest that there was a known, unresolved problem with them. The effect, intended or not, was to focus everybody’s attention on the fuel switches and pilot actions, while inserting enough doubt to ensure that a conclusion could not be reached. Yet, there is a far more coherent explanation: that AI171 was brought down by a systemic failure in the Boeing 787 — one shaped by technology design choices, compounded by manufacturing defects, and triggered by proximate maintenance failures.
The 787 is a “more electric” and software-driven aircraft, with algorithmic decision-making systems written to override pilot controls based on sensor inputs – the FA DEC (Full Authority Digital Engine Control) and TCMA (Thrust Control Malfunction Accommodation). Older aircraft distributed risk across multiple, largely independent systems. The 787 centralis es it. At the heart of this architecture is the Common Core System (CCS) — comprising a Common Computing Resource, a Common Data Network, and Remote Data Concentrators. It reduces weight and complexity. But it also creates multiple pathways to failure. An electrical transient, a software glitch or reboot, packet loss in data transmission, a bad sensor input misinforming FADEC or TCMA, a momentary loss of power routing or data synchronisation — any of these, especially during take-off, the most unforgiving phase of flight, can cascade into a catastrophe. And then there is the 787’s lithium-ion battery and its thermal runaway problem. Boeing’s recent history is a case study in how such systems can fail. The 737 Max crashes were ultimately traced to the MCAS (Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System) software acting on flawed sensor inputs. Boeing and American regulators tried hard to place the blame on pilots, but Ethiopian accident investigators forced the truth out into the open. The 787’s TCMA is also an algorithmic correction mechanism. If it receives bad data from a faulty Weight-on-Wheels sensor, it can make the wrong decision. Multiple Boeing whistleblowers have revealed, in Congressional testimonies and court filings, several manufacturing defects in the 787s, especially the early batches from which the VT-ANB, the AI171 aircraft, came to Air India: structural gaps, force-fit assembly practices, and water leakage from toilets into electrical bays. Then there’s the history of 787 incidents: battery fires, control failures, electrical faults, fuel leaks, un-commanded RAT (Ram Air Turbine) deployments, spurious system activations — including TCMA — and even fuel switch issues.
Consider the aircraft that crashed. In January, Ed Pier son, a former Boeing manager and founder of the Foundation for Aviation Safety, submitted a study on the VT-ANB’s fault logs and maintenance history to a US Senate committee showing that the aircraft has had troubles from day one: electronics and software faults, circuit breaker trips, wiring damage, short circuits, power fluctuations, overheating.
In 2022, a fire destroyed one of its power distribution panels mid-flight. Journalist Rachel Chitra’s investigative reporting uncovered that the aircraft had reported multiple faults in the 72 hours before the crash, including hard landing in to Ahmedabad on the fateful day due to a sensor fault. The AAIB preliminary report notes that the aircraft flew with four active faults, including core network degradation. Capt. Amit Singh of Safety Matters Foundation, the petitioner in the Supreme Court, revealed in his PIL that 15 minutes before take-off, both Bus Power Control Units reported faults — suggesting instability in the aircraft’s electrical system. Yet the aircraft was cleared to fly. Independent analyses by pilots, engineers, and investigators — working from the preliminary report, CCTV footage, fault and maintenance logs – have converged on the same conclusion: the pilot action theory does not fit the observed sequence of events. A cascading systemic failure does. The continued opacity on all sides suggests that there is a negotiation underway over the truth. After all, the stakes are enormous. For Boeing, still struggling to recover from the 737 Max crisis, another finding of systemic failure could be devastating — perhaps existential.
For America, Boeing is not just a company; it is strategic. Its decline would open space for China’s COMAC. Air India faces exposure regardless of the outcome, whether systemic and maintenance failures caused the crash or one of its pilots did.
Geopolitically, a finding against Boeing could strain India-US relations at an already delicate moment. New Delhi has to reckon with Donald Trump, who calls himself Boeing’s best salesman and has used his trade deal negotiations to force countries to buy Boeing. PM Modi will be cognizant of the fact that the crash occurred in Ahmedabad. People will come to their own conclusions as to whether they saw Modi standing up to American pressure or givein. The world is watching to see whether India is able to safeguard its own interests and secure justice for its citizens, as Ethiopia did for the Boeing 737 Max crash. In the AI171 case, therefore, the truth is in India’s national interest. It should not be negotiated away. India owes it to the 260 people who died and to their families.
The writer is a senior journalist and researcher based in Bangalore.
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