An Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner traveling from Ahmedabad, the capital of the western Indian state Gujarat, to London crashed Thursday afternoon, killing 241 passengers and crew. In addition, Reuters has reported that as many as 24 more people on the ground were killed when the plane crashed in a densely populated area shortly after take-off. A medical college hostel, where students had gathered for lunch, was directly impacted.
The only known survivor from the plane, Ramesh Viswahkumar, managed to jump out of the aircraft as he was seated near the emergency exit. He is currently under psychiatric care for trauma at the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad. Among the dead were 168 Indian nationals, 53 British citizens, seven Portuguese nationals, one Canadian, as well as the flight’s captain, co-pilot, and 10 cabin crew members.
The long-haul aircraft was carrying over 100,000 liters (about 25,000 gallons) of fuel, with debris engulfed in flames and thick black smoke billowing into the sky. Parts of the plane’s fuselage were scattered around the smoldering building into which it crashed. The tail of the plane was wedged on top of the building. Visuals showed victims being carried on stretchers and rushed away in ambulances. Mobile phone clips revealed charred bodies, some burnt beyond recognition, evoking images of a war zone after a massive explosion.
“We were at home and heard a massive sound, it appeared like a big blast. We then saw very dark smoke which engulfed the entire area,” 63-year-old Nitin Joshi who has been living in the area for more than 50 years told Reuters.
The reports also showed families of victims camped out outside Ahmedabad’s civil hospital after submitting DNA samples to identify their loved ones.
While the public remains genuinely shaken by the tragedy, political leaders—including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other heads of states—have responded with empty expressions of concern and sympathy, visiting the crash site and hospitals. In a bid to save face, Tata Group, the owner of Air India, announced a compensation of 10 million rupees (approximately $US116,106) for the families of each crash victim, pledged to cover medical expenses for the injured, and offered assistance in rebuilding the B.J. Medical hostel damaged in the crash.
India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has initiated a formal investigation, according to Union Minister of Civil Aviation Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu. The bureau also reported that aviation officials from the US and UK are sending investigators to assist with probe.
The crash is the worst involving a Boeing jetliner since the two crashes in 2018 and 2019, both involving a 737 MAX 8, which in total killed 346 passengers and crew. Boeing has since faced numerous investigations into the production of those aircraft, which found that Boeing executives were aware the planes were fatally flawed and pushed for their production and distribution anyway.
In one of the many examples of collusion between corporations and the capitalist state that protects them, Boeing recently reached a non-prosecution deal with the Department of Justice, avoiding any criminal prosecution for the MAX 8 crashes and paying only $1.3 million per death.
The exact cause of the crash over Ahmedabad is still unclear, with initial commentary discussing the plane’s flaps, landing gear, engines and more as potential issues that prevented the aircraft from generating the necessary lift to carry out its flight. Television footage and photographs captured the plane angled up, the pilot likely attempting to stay aloft, before crashing near the airport and erupting into a fireball.
One of the few things that is known is that the pilots reportedly issued a “Mayday” call moments after departure, signaling a life-threatening emergency, but failed to respond to further communications from air traffic control. On Friday, local authorities confirmed that both black boxes from the crashed aircraft had been recovered.
A BBC report cited expert speculation about the possibility of an “extremely rare double engine failure.” It noted that questions have been raised about whether the aircraft’s Ram Air Turbine (RAT)—an emergency backup system that activates when main engines fail—was deployed. Quoting a senior pilot, the BBC highlighted that such a failure could stem from “fuel contamination or clogging,” explaining that aircraft engines depend on a precise fuel metering system, and any blockage could lead to fuel starvation and engine shutdown.
Air safety experts have cautioned against jumping to conclusions. John M. Cox, a former airline pilot and chief executive of Safety Operating Systems, a consulting firm, told Business Today: “At this point, it’s very, very, very early. We don’t know a whole lot, but the 787 has very extensive flight data monitoring.” Both of the plane’s black boxes have been recovered.
The New York Times noted: “Planes and the aviation system have many redundancies to prevent a single problem from leading to a calamity.” As a result, crashes are generally the result of multiple failures and require a lengthy investigation to unravel.
There is no doubt, however, that Air India, the Modi government and Boeing will seek to deflect responsibility for the tragedy.
Air India, the country’s largest state-owned airline, had been struggling under a massive debt burden of 580 billion rupees ($8 billion) while still state-owned. The Modi government, as part of its push to privatize virtually all state-owned companies, sold the airline to the Tata Group, India’s largest conglomerate owned by industrialist Ratan Tan in 2022 for a pittance. Last year, Tata completed a merger of Air India with Vistara, its joint venture with Singapore Airlines.
According to the Associated Press, the airline had suffered two previous fatal crashes while under the government control. In 2010, an Air India flight arriving from Dubai overshot the runway in Mangalore in southern India and plunged over a cliff, killing 158 of the 166 people on board. In 2020, an Air India Express flight—part of the airline’s low-cost subsidiary— from Dubai to Kozhikode in southern India skidded off the runway during heavy rains, split in two, and left 18 dead and more than 120 injured. Both incidents involved the older Boeing 737-800 aircraft.
Thursday tragic crash, occurring against the backdrop of recent incidents involving Boeing aircraft, have raised significant concerns about safety regulation compliance and manufacturing quality. This includes a midair nosedive of a LATAM Airlines’ Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner flying from Australia to New Zealand, which injured 50 people in March last year.
And while this is the first fatal crash of a Boeing 787, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) audit of Boeing’s Renton facility and its key supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, revealed “dozens of problems” and “multiple instances” of non-compliance with quality control requirements. Boeing failed 33 out of 89 product audits, with 97 alleged instances of noncompliance, while Spirit AeroSystems failed seven out of 13 examinations, including mechanics using a “hotel key card to check a door seal” and applying “Dawn soap to a door seal as a lubricant.”
The majority of failures involved not following “approved manufacturing process, procedure or instruction” and issues with quality control documentation, characterized by the FAA as “plant floor hygiene” and tool management problems.
These findings corroborate former quality manager John Barnett’s warnings about “catastrophic” safety failings, a “culture of concealment,” and Boeing prioritizing “profits over safety.” Barnett, who worked for Boeing from 1985 to 2017, had reported metal slivers affecting flight control wiring and found 25 percent of 787 Dreamliner emergency oxygen systems did not work properly, claiming management pressured employees “not to document defects” and install defective material.
Barnett is one of two Boeing whistleblowers who were found dead last year either before or in the midst of their testimony against the military contractor.
In his ongoing efforts to attract greater investment from Boeing, Modi has repeatedly praised the aerospace giant. During a visit to India on March 18, Boeing senior vice president Brendan Nelson told the Times of India that recent reforms have made the country a highly “attractive place” for companies like Boeing. Nelson revealed plans to “significantly increase” the company’s engagement in India, including boosting its annual sourcing from the current 100 billion rupees ($1.3 billion) across 320 suppliers. Simultaneously, Boeing expects to deliver two aircraft per month to Indian airlines over the next two years.
Whatever the official cause determined for the deadly Ahmedabad plane crash, both the Modi government and Boeing are more focused on safeguarding corporate interests than upholding passenger safety. This latest crash once again underscores the need for a complete restructuring of the airline industry to prioritize human lives, not private profits, as part of the broader socialist transformation of society.