MUMBAI, India – Next week marks 40 years since the Air India 182, Kanishka, was blown up over the Irish seas. I write this as I make my way to Cork, Ireland, for the 40th-anniversary prayers; images of that tragedy flashback in my mind and my heart as if it was yesterday, as we all witnessed this devastating tragedy unfold before our eyes, triggering so many dark memories.
Just as June 23, 1985 has been written in stone, June 12 will be etched in the annals of aviation history with the tragedy at Ahmedabad (AMD) airport, when the 11-year-old Boeing B787 Dreamliner, registered as VT-ANB bound for London Gatwick airport with 230 passengers and 12 crew, took off at 1339 IST (0809 GMT) and began dropping at 635 feet, from the skies, onto a medical college hostel 2km from the Airport in Medhaninagar, and then exploding in flames.
The Pilot in Command, Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, was a 30-year-old veteran Training Captain with more than 8,000 hours of impeccable flying to his name. Along with him was Captain Clive Kunder, a young pilot from an Aviator’s family, starting his career with 1,100 hours to his name.
The Pilot gave out a Mayday signal as he took off, and it was visible to most observers from the videos of the incident that the climbing aircraft had no thrust and was losing power and lift, crashing atop a medical college hostel a few seconds later. Ironically, on June 15, the Aviation Ministry released the text of the Mayday & ACARS message from the captain, which said, “MAYDAY… MAYDAY… MAYDAY… NO POWER… NO THRUST… GOING DOWN…”
The flight was over in 36 seconds; 241 people lost their lives on the aircraft, at least 35 were reported dead, and 70 were injured or missing from the college hostel, with one miraculous survivor who walked out of the burning plane wreck.
The aircraft bound for London was heavily laden with aviation turbine fuel for the 9-hour 40-minute flight, and that added to the weight of the aircraft and also provided fuel for the inferno to burn the metal bird and the buildings in its wake.
A few hours later, India, and indeed the world, was in mourning. A visibly shaken Home Minister, Mr. Amit Shah, whose electoral constituency, Gandhinagar, abuts Ahmedabad, was choking on his words. PM Narendra Modi was burdened with grief on his visit to the crash site. World leaders poured in their condolences, with President Trump offering all help from the FAA and the NTSB. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer also indicated that the UK CAA accident investigation team would assist the investigation.
The plane carried 169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, 7 Portuguese nationals, and one Canadian national.
Among the Crew, Ms. Shraddha Dhavan and Ms. Aparna Mahadik, both experienced VVIP crew members who had flown Prime Ministers and Presidents, were the Cabin supervisors. They left behind their daughters, aged 10 and 13 years old. Saineeta Chakravarthy, a 35-year-old crew member from Juhu Koliwada, an alumnus of Maneckji Cooper, who transitioned from a domestic airline to Air India, had never married, as she took care of her aged parents, whom she left behind. Lamunthem Singson, a 24-year-old newly recruited crew from Manipur, just starting her career; Roshni Songhare is a rising Instagram travel influencer, and the others Manisha Thapa, K.N. Sharma, Maithili Patil, Irfan Shaikh, Deepak Pathak, all leave behind families and loved ones.
The horrific visuals of the plane crashing into a medical college hostel and its rear section being lodged atop the roof are haunting scenes for anyone who saw it. The image of the big bird lifting off, only to enter a slow descent into the college, as the captain fought with his own machine to try and make it glide and save more people, as it exploded into an inferno, is a scary visual I will carry with me all my life, as will millions of others.
Sadly, for AI-171, there was to be no miracle on the Hudson, and despite the supreme skills of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and those passengers and crew who lived on hope and prayer, they were belied that afternoon.
I watched transfixed on my television, praying for survivors amidst that towering inferno, as I was on a live TV show with Rajdeep Sardesai. The breaking news of a survivor walking out was like Lazarus had risen from the dead.
Amidst all the mayhem, the exploding ATF fuel, and the billowing smoke, one survivor walked out: Mr. Vishwashkumar Ramesh from seat 11A, who defied all logic. With barely any burns on him, new videos even show him walking out of the flames, like a Superhero, and talking on his cell phone. He is the miracle of AI-171, as all of us seek to make sense of this mayhem. Two days later, teams scouring the aircraft wreckage found a Bhagwad Gita lying on the aircraft floor in ashes, yet untouched by the flames or the crash; maybe this was a divine message for the milling humanity, so desperate to make sense of this unthinkable tragedy.
Eyewitnesses and doctors from the neighboring college building reported seeing an explosion followed by a bright flame. The furnace-like conditions prevented volunteers from jumping to rescue anyone, and first responders reported that the inferno had an ambient temperature over 200 degrees Celsius at its core.
Captain Sumeet was on the verge of retiring from the Airline to look after his aged father, and Captain Clive Kunder was the son of retired air hostess Rekha Kunder and had just joined Air India. Both of their dreams turned to ashes by this cruel act of destiny.
The horror stories of families trickled in slowly as the entire breadth of the disaster unfolded. British wellness guru Jamie Meek and his husband Fiongal Greenlaw, an LGBTQ advocate, had posted a video on social media, saying how happy they both were going home and had a wonderful time in Gujarat. This was moments before they boarded the plane to their sudden demise. The saving grace was that they perished together, and after having celebrated their togetherness in the core of the Gujarati heartland, they had never felt more welcomed. The couple had appeared on ITV Britain showcasing their wellness products from Gujarat a few days earlier.
Payal Khatik, the daughter of Suresh Khatik, a rickshaw puller, died on the flight. She was going to study in the UK, and her father worked tirelessly to earn enough money and take out loans to ensure that she received a British education. Her first flight turned out to be her last.
A Derbyshire doctor, Dr. Prateek Joshi, his wife, and three children died on AI-171. He had clicked and uploaded a family selfie just before departure and posted it online, and all of them perished.
Another tragic story is that of Arjunbhai Manubhai Patolya, from Vaidya, Gujarat, who had been living in London for many years. His wife had passed away in London after a prolonged illness, and her last wish was for her last rites to be performed in her hometown in Gujarat and her ashes to be scattered there. Arjun returned to India, leaving his two young children there, and had performed her last rites, only to perish on AI-171.
Kinal Patel, a hotel management student who died in the AI-171, had been involved in a horrific car accident last year but escaped with a broken jaw. This time, however, she was not so lucky.
Among the passengers of Air India Flight AI171 was Mariam Ali Syed, a brand ambassador for Harrods, and her husband, Javed Ali Syed, of the Best Western Kensington Olympia Hotel, and their children Zayn and Amani. They had gone to Malad Mumbai to visit his ailing mother and were flying back with their children.
Parents cried for children they had lost, while children sobbed for parents who had left them. The stories bore out the human distress that lay waste on the fields of BJ Medical College, where at least 40 students and doctors were eating lunch, and a host of others queued up for their meals.
The DGCA announced that the AAIB would lead the investigation into the crash, and the government of India also announced a high-level team of bureaucrats and police to examine the broader aspects of the tragedy and provide their views on the entire incident.
President Trump announced that the US NTSB would be joining the investigation, as did the UK’s CAA. Representatives from Boeing and engine maker GE also made their way to Ahmedabad, India.
The Gujarat government, the police, NIA, and ATS began collecting evidence at the scene, and the local hospital facilitated the DNA testing of victims’ families for DNA mapping. The Black box “CVR & DFDR” were recovered from the roof of the hostel on the third day of the tragedy, and the aircraft tail itself was brought down on the fifth day of the tragedy.
Having witnessed multiple crashes and accidents over the past 40 years and having been at the scene of the Kanishka tragedy in Ireland, the Mangalore and Kozhikode disasters, the flaming 747 evacuation at Mumbai, and a few other minor accidents, I have seen firsthand the traumatic impact of crashes and the victim identification process.
The visual identification process of bodies is perhaps the most horrific thing that families have to do, and speaking from personal experience 40 years ago in Ireland during the Kanishka bombing, as I recounted in my book On Angels Wings- beyond the bombing of Air India 182. The matching of DNA in recent years has made it somewhat easier for families to identify their loved ones without much of the visual trauma, but the suffering remains all the same.
The impact of a tragedy like this has multiple aspects: on the families, on the citizenry, and the pilots and crew of the Airline. The untold grief that encompasses colleagues and airline personnel is an aspect we don’t speak about enough, but PTSD is real. The counseling and care required for those friends, colleagues, and even flyers from other airlines is something we in India have not yet grasped, but we need to appreciate. Our society needs to mature and accept that all of us develop deeply embedded trauma from tragic accidents like this, and the sights, sounds, and smell of death never leave you. It still sits deep in my psyche, though I lost my entire family in the Air India bombing 40 years ago.
There is also the fear psychosis and ultra sensitivity that enters the minds of aviation professionals after an accident or tragedy of this magnitude, resulting in multiple faults being detected, over-cautiousness in operations, and fear that this could occur again. Grief counseling and stricter checks are the need of the hour, along with additional crew and mentors.
The DGCA has announced a series of repeat checks and line checks by Air India. As of the time of writing, 27 of the 35 Dreamliners have cleared these checks without any findings. Some of the aircraft have been grounded earlier due to various reasons. The DGCA has acknowledged Air India’s checks and results too. Despite this, at least three instances have occurred in the last two days where aircraft have turned back due to some technical reason or another.
It is not as though Air India’s airframe and avionics engineering are poor; on the contrary, it is among the best in the world. It is the element of ultra-sensitivity and human caution that guides every action. Going back forty years, there were at least 11 bomb scares in the wake of the Kanishka that caused groundings and checks. Post 9/11, we saw the scrambling of fighter jets in multiple countries across the world whenever any aircraft strayed slightly from their flight paths. Post Kozhikode, there were many landing go-arounds and instances of aircraft diversions, even during the slightest of weather phenomena. The caution and concern are real and are heightened in this social media reel-driven world, where images of the mushroom explosion are vivid in many viewers’ minds, the instances replayed over and over again, giving rise to many concerns.
Amidst all of this tragedy and sadness, as is their wont, TV channels began speculating a hundred different theories, ranging from sabotage to pilot error, with a sprinkling of fuel contamination in between. TRPs and ratings mean more than reporting facts, and truth became the casualty; the situation bred vultures that hovered over the carcass of this tragedy.
Everyone had a theory that was essential to promote their own viewpoint, especially foreign retired pilots, who were obviously promoting it for vested interests and the benefit of foreign agencies.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is a modern-day wonder of an aircraft, with over 1175 of them flying in the skies, having flown over 5 million flights, which is equivalent to 32 million hours of flying. The millions of passengers these flights could have carried would amount to approximately 8,000 million passenger hours cumulatively, and they have done so without a single crash so far.
The AI-171 is the first tragedy of the 787 Dreamliner. It will be investigated deeply, especially as the preliminary visual of most experienced engineers, aviators, and experts appears that, for some reason, the aircraft suffered an engine event, which could even have been a dual engine failure, leading to loss of thrust and power, and deployment of the RAT, whether this was due to electronic, electrical, hydraulic or fuel failure, or ingestion of objects, or whether this was indeed a case of human error, we will not know until data from the black box has been thoroughly analyzed and assessed and finds its way into a report.
The preliminary assessment by the AAIB is expected to be available within a fortnight and will be eagerly awaited worldwide. Boeing has had its share of troubles in recent years, and the implications are enormous for the Boeing community and the comity of airlines the world over, as an indication of a technical failure could result in investigations or, even worse, groundings for more than 1000 aircraft worldwide, as we saw in the case of the 737 max some years ago. The stakes are very high, and global aviation has never been in such a sensitive spot as it is at the current time.
For the 241 souls of AI 171 and the approximately 40 other students on the ground, life came to a full stop that day. We as a nation mourn their loss, and their families shall forever mourn their passing—my prayers to my friends and former colleagues at Air India. There will be days and years to come when these families will miss their loved ones on special occasions, or anniversaries and birthdays, and the grief of that 12th June afternoon will return and replay as though it was yesterday; I know this from my personal trauma and experience even 40 years later. I pray that we, as a people, honor and remember them and that they find peace and blue skies forever, my friends.
Sanjay Lazar
Sanjay Lazar is an aviation analyst, Lawyer, and author who writes on International relations, Aviation, and law. He has spent 40 years in aviation and lost his entire family in the Air India Kanishka bombing in 1985. He is @sjlazars on @x.
