FIP Casts Doubt on Air India Crash Preliminary Report

The Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) has alleged that the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau's (AAIB) preliminary report on Air India flight 171 crash appears to have deliberately omitted cockpit warning data that would have pointed to an electrical failure preceding the loss of both engines.

The pilots' association said that simulator tests commissioned independently by them have exposed timing errors that further undermine the report's findings.

FIP said it had written to the govt with a request that AAIB should run simulator tests before releasing the final report on the June 12, 2025, accident.

At a presser Friday, FIP president Capt C Randhawa said an electrical failure of the kind the federation has long alleged would have triggered a cascade of caution messages, accompanied by audio alerts, all of which would have been recorded on the cockpit voice recorder. He alleged the preliminary report chose not to reproduce that warning sequence.

He questioned why flight data recorder installed in the tail of the aircraft was damaged extensively when the tail was largely found intact. He referred to the fact that this particular recorder is solely powered by electricity and implied that the damage indicated a problem with the aircraft's electric power supply.

Randhawa said FIP commissioned 10 tests on a Boeing 787 simulator after AAIB declined repeated requests to conduct its own replication.

The tests found the Ram Air Turbine, the emergency power supply in the aircraft takes 18 seconds to deploy and restore hydraulic pressure after engine shutdown, directly contradicting the preliminary report's timeline that RAT deployed four seconds after fuel control switches moved to cut off fuel supply to the engines.

Capt Randhawa invoked the 'Miracle on the Hudson' event of 2009, when a US Airways flight landed on the Hudson River shortly after take-off. The US investigating agency had initially blamed Capt Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger for choosing to ditch in the river. But after they ran 30-35 simulator tests, they learned that the aircraft could not have made it back to the runway on time and landed safely. It was only then that Capt Sullenberger, who was alive to defend himself, was cleared.

"Here we have captains who have died. No one is there to protect them," said Capt Randhawa.