Safety lessons caught in air pocket

The AI171 crash brings into focus the aviation reforms that two major accidents in the past promised to roll out

- DEEPAK PATEL

One of the key recommendations following the Kozhikode air crash in August 2020 — in which an Air India Express aircraft from Dubai overshot the runway during landing in heavy rain, killing 21 people — was for India to develop its own laboratory to analyse flight data and cockpit voice recorders, commonly known as black boxes. That facility, set up under the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), was inaugurated this April, close to five years after the Kozhikode crash. And, its effectiveness is already under scrutiny.

After the recent crash of Air India flight AI171 in Ahmedabad on June 12 — which killed 241 passengers and crew members and 34 people on the ground — investigators found that the black boxes were damaged. While the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) has said no decision has been taken yet on sending them abroad for decoding, the possibility itself raises the same concern flagged in the Kozhikode accident report: India's lack of self-sufficiency in accident investigation.

As authorities wait to see whether data from the AI171 black boxes can be recovered in India, a broader concern looms: how many of the lessons from the last two major commercial aviation accidents — in Mangaluru (2010) and Kozhikode (2020) — in India were actually implemented? And have they made flying any safer?

Action after Mangaluru crash The Mangaluru air crash of May 2010, in which 158 people died, involved another Air India Express flight — then a subsidiary of state-owned Air India. The accident prompted a major introspection across India's aviation ecosystem.

The Court of Inquiry, led by Air Marshal (Retd) B N Gokhale, into the Mangaluru crash spurred action on several fronts: from upgrading airport infrastructure to enhancing cockpit procedures and pilot training.