“AAIB has successfully decoded the entire data from black box of the crashed plane,” Union Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu shared the update on Ahmedabad plane crash in Rajya Sabha on Monday.
“I have seen multiple articles not only by the Indian media but also by the Western media trying to promote their own viewpoint,” the union minister said amid speculations over AI plane crash probe.
“We want to stand with truth, not anything else. The way we are seeing the investigation is through the facts,” he added.
The aviation minister reiterated that AAIB is completely unbiased. The agency is investigating into the incident to answer the questions ‘what happened and why it happened’.
Amid widespread speculations and rumours, Naidu said that the final report will reveal the reason behind Air India plane crash. The government and agencies must wait for the final report before reaching conclusions.”To have a definitive answer and definitive future correction measures, we need to look at the final report,” said Naidu.Whenever the black box of a flight was damaged, the black box was always sent to the manufacturer state for data recovery. This was the first time when India decided to decode and recover the data from flight recorded in the country itself.
Usually when the black box of a flight is damaged in an accident, it is sent to original equipment manufacturer for decoding and extracting the data, but India took a stand that even if black box has damaged, data will be decided in the country itself, Naidu said.
“I want to say to the country that AAIB has a thorough rule-based process and they are totally unbiased,” the Union Minister said.
AAIB initiated investigation into the matter right after the incident. They involved subject matter experts and international experts to decode the black box data and cockpit recorder. After undergoing the first step of the investigation process, the agency released a preliminary report.
The government has formed a high-level committee under the chairmanship of Home Secretary. Several experts from the aviation industry have joined the committee to welcome suggestions for safety measures and oversee the investigation process of London-bound Air India flight that crashed in Ahmedabad.
Union Minister Naidu also said that the government has announced compensation for all the people affected by the incident. Not only the Air India passengers, but same compensation has also been announced for the students and members of medical college who were affected by the plane crash in Ahmedabad.
On June 12, Air India’s Boeing 787-8 aircraft enroute from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick crashed into a building soon after take off, killing 260 people, including 19 people on the ground. Out of the 242 people onboard, one passenger survived.
On July 12, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) released its preliminary report into the fatal crash.
On July 17, AAIB said it is too early to draw any “definite conclusions” on what led to the Air India plane crash, as the probe is still on and that the final report will come out with the root causes, while it urged everyone to refrain from spreading premature narratives.
