Air India plane crash probe: Captain RS Sandhu appointed domain expert

Veteran pilot and former Air India director of operations Captain RS Sandhu has been appointed as a domain expert by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) in the ongoing probe into the Ahmedabad plane crash, sources told PTI on Sunday.

 

Sandhu, who was also a designated examiner for the Boeing 787-8 fleet at Air India, had taken delivery of the now-crashed 787-8 plane—VT-ANB—in 2013.

 

Air India flight AI171, which crashed minutes after take-off on June 12, killed 260 people — 241 on board and 19 on the ground.

 

“AAIB has onboarded seasoned aviator RS Sandhu in the ongoing investigation of the Air India Boeing 787-8 plane crash in Ahmedabad last month,” one of the sources told PTI.

 

AAIB had apparently approached Sandhu to be a domain expert in the ongoing probe, and he agreed to the proposal, the sources told PTI. 

 

Sandhu, who was with Air India for nearly 39 years in various capacities, is the founder of aviation consultancy firm Aviazione. He had also headed a team that worked on the integration of the Tata group airlines.

 

The investigation of the plane crash has come under controversy after The Wall Street Journal reported that their source had heard the audio recording recovered from the plane, in which the junior pilot can be heard asking the senior pilot about switching off the fuel supply.

 

Notably, the preliminary findings of the investigation have suggested that the plane crashed due to an issue with the fuel supply switch.

 

Following the reports, pilots have raised concerns over the issue, and later Air India clarified that the fuel switches of all their Boeing Dreamliner aircraft—the same model involved in the Ahmedabad plane crash—are functioning properly.

 

The aircraft manufacturer Boeing has also come under the radar of the controversy, and a 2024 report has resurfaced after the crash, in which a deceased whistleblower—a former Boeing employee—warned that the manufacturing facility of the Dreamliner 787 was plagued by “shoddy work practices and poor oversight.”  [With inputs from PTI]