From crash site to decoding lab: India handling AI-171 probe entirely in the country

NEW DELHI: The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) Lab in New Delhi, is currently working intensively to examine data retrieved from the black boxes of Air India Flight AI-171, which crashed in Ahmedabad earlier this month.

According to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the Crash Protection Module (CPM) from the front black box was safely retrieved, and on June 25, 2025, the memory module was successfully accessed and its data downloaded at the AAIB Lab. Sources familiar with the process told ANI that an identical black box, referred to as a “golden chassis,” was used to confirm whether data could be accurately recovered from the black boxes. One black box was recovered from the rooftop of a building at the crash site on June 13, and the other from the debris on June 16.

The investigation is being led by AAIB officials and includes technical members from the Indian Air Force, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) from the United States, which is the official investigative agency of the country of the aircraft’s design and manufacture. The Director General of AAIB is heading the probe. An aviation medicine expert and an Air Traffic Control officer have also been included in the investigation team. Sources confirmed that the NTSB team is currently stationed in Delhi and working closely with Indian authorities at the AAIB Lab. Officials from Boeing and GE are also present in the national capital to assist with the technical process.

India, as a signatory to the ICAO Chicago Convention of 1944, is following all international rules and procedures as per ICAO Annex 13 and the Aircraft (Investigation of Accidents and Incidents) Rules, 2017. The investigation is being conducted in a fully transparent and time-bound manner, in line with global norms.

Before the crash of Air India Flight AI-171, AAIB used to send black boxes of damaged aircraft and, in some cases, even helicopters to overseas decoding centres in countries like the UK, USA, France, Italy, Canada, and Russia. Indian labs earlier lacked the equipment and dedicated facility to retrieve black box data from serious aviation accidents. That has now changed, and the AAIB Lab in Delhi is fully equipped to decode both Cockpit Voice Recorders (CVR) and Flight Data Recorders (FDR) within the country.

A source told ANI that although AAIB was formed in 2012 to investigate major aviation accidents, it remained under-equipped and limited in its functioning until 2017. It was only after the Central Government, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiative, pushed for the development of home-grown technology in defence, aviation, and other strategic sectors that AAIB began to receive advanced tools and technical upgrades. As a result, India is now decoding black boxes of a major air crash within the country for the first time.

In earlier crashes, black box decoding was mostly done abroad. In the 1996 Charkhi Dadri crash, black boxes were decoded by IAC in Moscow and the CVR in Farnborough, UK. In the 2010 Mangalore crash, recorders were repaired and decoded by the NTSB in the US. In the 2015 Delhi crash, decoding was done at the engineering lab of Canada’s Transportation Safety Board. In the 2020 Kozhikode crash, the CVR and FDR were downloaded at DGCA’s flight recorder facility, but the data was processed with help from the NTSB.

Such dependence often led to concerns about delays and the credibility of investigations. But now, with the AI-171 crash investigation being carried out entirely in India, supported by international cooperation and equipped with advanced tools, this marks a major milestone in India’s aviation safety journey. Officials believe this will lead to faster, more transparent investigations and strengthen public trust in India’s ability to handle major air accidents independently. (ANI)