Thursday afternoon June 12, 2025, An Air India flight 171 departed the terminal at Ahmedabad Airport. The pilots lining the aircraft up before taking off without reporting any problems. However, the flight before this inbound from Delhi to Ahmedabad had some severe electrical issues. A passenger posted a video as to make a formal complaint about the flight with no air conditioning. Addition to no air flowing in the cabin even tv monitors. Other electrical problems like the call buttons. lights and other smaller amenities are not working.
The aircraft was an eleven-year Boeing 787-8. The weather was calm, clear skies at 40°C (104F). With that heat it makes for thinner air and would have demanded higher flap settings and greater engine thrust. The pilot had 8 years’ experience, but the copilot had only maybe maximum one thousand hours of flying. After a few days and watching over a few videos of the takeoff there are a few anomalies observed.
Three major things could have been the cause of the crash
1 Pilot / Pilots error
2 Electrical problems prior to the flight thus causing a malfunction of critical controls. This could effectively be causing mechanical failure like engine failure.
3 Combination of pilot error and mechanical failure
One major concern is that the previous inbound flight had major electrical problems. There should had made the decision to take the aircraft out of service and find a replacement aircraft for flight !71 from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick in the U.K.
Another major mistake from the cockpit was the flaps were not set right. Addition to that from the co-pilot did not retract the landing gear within 15 seconds of take off and that was not done at all. So now two catastrophic decisions in a hot day where thin air was the flaps not correctly with the gear down will ultimately cause air drag and a stall out. After watching a few videos many times over and sound noticeably the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) deployed, an emergency back-up turbine which kicks in when main engines fail to generate power for essential systems. Heavy with fuel for a long flight and one last thing. The angle of take off was wrong a mere 15 degrees with immense struggle to gain altitude. It only made it 630 plus feet above ground before descending at a bad angle as it approached the medical hostel building before exploding on impact.
Passengers and crew were on board 242 people and by a miracle a sole survivor in seat 11A right next to an emergency door escaped. Total of 241 on board killed along with 38 people on the ground also killed from the impact.
The black boxes have now been recovered, and we will wait for some time until the initial findings are made to report further. Once again though as mentioned first off, this aircraft should have been pulled from service. Air India’s history is not perfect and been known to use aircraft in the past with broken seats or other issues. Even minor mechanical and even air condition problems before. Air India was acquired by the Tata Group in 2022 with 74.9 per cent in ownership. The other 25.9per cent is reported to be owned by Singapore Airlines. That was the current percentage last reported before the air-crash.
Source fire and Aviation TV 06/17/26