Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, June 14: Even as multiple probes are on to establish the cause of the disastrous crash of the London-bound Air India flight near the Ahmedabad airport on Thursday, sources on Saturday said total power failure to engines soon after the take-off may have caused the accident.
Just seconds before the Air India AI 171 crash, pilot Sumit Sabharwal issued a desperate Mayday call to Ahmedabad ATC, reporting total engine failure and loss of thrust.
Two days after India witnessed one of its deadliest aviation disasters, a chilling audio message has emerged from the cockpit of Air India Flight AI-171. The London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed seconds after take-off from Ahmedabad airport on Thursday, killing at least 274 people, including 229 of the 230 passengers, and all the 12 crew members on board and at least 33 people of the ground, many of them medical students.
Just moments before the aircraft plunged into the residential quarters of a medical college in Meghaninagar, senior pilot Captain Sumit Sabharwal sent a brief distress call to the Ahmedabad Air Traffic Control (ATC). The message, lasting only five seconds, captures the terror unfolding in the cockpit. In the audio, the pilot can be heard saying:
“MAYDAY… MAYDAY… MAYDAY… NO POWER… NO THRUST… GOING DOWN…”
The Ministry of Civil Aviation on Saturday detailed how the incident took place on Thursday afternoon. According to Civil Aviation Secretary Samir Kumar Sinha, the Ministry received initial information about the crash around 2 pm on June 12, about 20 minutes after the crash around 1.39 PM within seconds after the flight was airborne from the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad. Within seconds of departure, after reaching an altitude of around 650 feet, the plane began losing height.
At that very moment, the pilot declared a full emergency with a Mayday call to ATC. However, when controllers tried to contact the aircraft again, there was no response. Exactly one minute later, the plane crashed in Meghaninagar, around 2 km from the runway. Mr Sinha confirmed that the same aircraft had completed the Paris–Delhi–Ahmedabad leg earlier that day without any glitch.
The crash site, a residential hostel building, was engulfed in thick smoke as local residents and medical students were caught in the impact. A massive rescue operation followed.
The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which is overseeing the technical probe, was immediately mobilised. According to the civil aviation minister, the black box was recovered from the crash site around 5 pm on Friday. The AAIB believes decoding the data will offer crucial insight into what occurred in the moments leading up to the disaster.
Central agencies, including the National Investigation Agency (NIA), have visited the site as part of the broader investigation. The Ministry of Civil Aviation announced the formation of a high-level multi-disciplinary panel to investigate the cause of the crash. The panel will assess the circumstances leading to the crash and evaluate existing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and safety guidelines currently in place.
“… We received information the plane from Ahmedabad to Gatwick London had crashed. We immediately got detailed information about this through Ahmedabad ATC … there were a total of 242 people on board, consisting of 230 passengers, 10 crew, and two pilots,” Mr Sinha said.
“The plane took off at 1.39 pm and, within a few seconds, after reaching a height of about 650 feet, it started sinking, i.e., it started losing height. The pilot informed Ahmedabad ATC that it was a ‘mayday’, i.e., a full emergency. When ATC tried to contact, it did not receive a response,” Mr Sinha said.
