In brief
The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) of India has said a draft final report on the Air India Flight 171 crash will be ready by October, when investigators finish the analysis phase. The crash, which occurred on 12 June 2025 a few kilometres from Ahmedabad airport, killed 260 people and left only one survivor. Despite progress, the agency has yet to release the report or disclose findings, and has urged restraint from speculation amid allegations against senior pilot Capt Sumeet Sabharwal. The investigation has covered 49 of the 66 required steps, including psychological autopsies and motion‑capture tests. Uttam Kumar, former deputy chief of Bombay Airport, says the report will likely surface in the coming months.
The Indian agency investigating the 2025 Air India plane crash that killed 260 people has said a draft final report could be ready in October.
The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) told the Supreme Court in an affidavit filed on Tuesday that it was currently "engaged in the analysis phase" of the investigation, expected to complete in around six weeks.
The affidavit did not say when the report would be made public or disclose any findings related to the crash.
The tragedy took place on 12 June 2025, when an Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner en route to London crashed seconds after taking off from the Ahmedabad airport in western India. The plane came down about 6km from the airport, crashing into a building used as doctors' accommodation at a medical college, causing an explosion.
Altogether, 260 people - 241 on board and 19 on the ground - were killed in the crash. Only one passenger, Viswashkumar Ramesh from Leicester, survived.
The AAIB launched an investigation soon after the crash and released a preliminary report a month later. In a follow‑up on the first anniversary of the crash, it said that "significant progress" had been made in the analysis of evidence but gave few other details.
The AAIB said in Tuesday's affidavit that it had taken 49 of the 66 mandated steps for investigating any serious aircraft accident, including examining the accident site, collecting evidence such as flight recorders, reviewing crew medical histories and training records, and conducting a psychological autopsy of the crew.
The psychological autopsy involved an aviation psychologist assessing crew members' psychological profiles as part of the wider human‑factors investigation. The affidavit also noted that the AAIB had prepared a transcript of the cockpit voice recorder, though it did not reveal further details.
The preliminary report published last July said that just seconds after take‑off, fuel‑control switches abruptly moved to the "cut‑off" position, cutting away engine fuel and triggering total power loss. Audio recordings captured one pilot asking the other why he had done it, with the other replying that he had not. The report did not identify which pilot made either statement.
The ambiguity in the report prompted speculation about the pilots’ roles in the crash, with some foreign media reports suggesting that investigators were shifting attention toward senior pilot Capt Sumeet Sabharwal. This sparked backlash from Sabharwal's father, pilots' associations, and the AAIB, which criticised the coverage. In the affidavit, filed in response to a lawsuit by Sabharwal's father, the AAIB said that "media speculation and narrative attributing blameworthiness to the pilots have, regrettably, caused some witnesses to become restrictive and non-responsive".
