Air India crash report hides more than it reveals

IT’S been a fortnight since the Air Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) released its interim report on the Air India Boeing 171 crash that occurred in Ahmedabad on June 12. Instead of quelling speculations on what could have caused the disaster, the report has triggered more theories, hypotheses and even controversies in the past two weeks. The report is so vague and obfuscated that consumers are nowhere near the truth as to what happened in those 98 seconds from the time of take-off till the deadly crash. The report, in fact, shows the investigation agency in very poor light.One of the most crucial pieces of information in the initial probe comes from the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), which records all the conversations and noises in the cockpit. It would have also recorded the advisories, cautions and warnings issued by the Crew Alerting System of the aircraft. However, the report does not give us the full verbatim transcript of the CVR. Instead, like a film teaser, it gives us only two bits of incomplete conversation between the pilots. And here, too, in the third person, raising more questions than answers.After reporting that the two switches that supply fuel to the engines transitioned to the ‘Off’ position just 3 seconds after takeoff, the report says that one of the pilots says, “Why did you cut off?”, while the other says he did not do so. The report does not even identify who said what.Obviously, after the fuel cut-off, there would be panic, alarm, and further conversation between the pilots till one of them (we do not know who) called out “May Day”. Why has that been kept away from us? And why is the report giving the manufacturers of the airplane and the engine a clean chit, when the investigation into what caused the fuel cut-off is still on?Somehow, the report gives the impression that it is highly selective and manipulative in what it is revealing. Consumers as well as the bereaved families must therefore call for more transparency in the investigation and release of the full verbatim text of the CVR from the time the plane took off till it crashed.In South Korea, for example, the families of those who died in the Jeju Air crash last year are demanding a full transcript of the Black Box data. On December 29, the flight that took off from Thailand crashed while landing at Muan International Airport in South Korea, killing all but two of the 181 on board.On January 31 this year, the South Korean Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board published its preliminary report. It said the Boeing 737-800 made an emergency landing due to a bird strike and landed on its belly without its landing gear deployed, overran the runway and crashed into the embankment, including the localisers, bursting into flames.Examination of the engines had shown bird feathers and bird blood stains in both. The report also noted that the CVR and flight data recorder (FDR) stopped recording from 08.54.50, thereby denying the investigators the last 4 minutes and 7 seconds of the crucial data.In the Jeju Air crash case, a subsequent interim report (not yet released to the public) reportedly blamed the pilots for mistakenly cutting off the left engine, which was still working, instead of the right that was totally damaged, leading to a complete shutdown of both the engines. However, the bereaved families to whom the report was first presented in a private meeting, have refused to accept this. They have demanded a full transcript of the Black Box data and other documents as proof.I have looked at several recently issued preliminary reports pertaining to air crashes in different countries. And I must mention the one released on March 20 by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada on the Endeavour Air crash at the Pearson airport in Toronto on February 17 this year. The plane crash-landed, caught fire, overturned and slid down the runway, leaving the passengers hanging upside down. Miraculously, all the 80 on board survived the crash, even though 21 of them received injuries, two of them serious ones. The flight was coming from Minneapolis, USA.The 20-page report makes no insinuations, blames no one, it just gives full, precise facts detailing the plane’s descent till it crashed, besides other mandatory information. For example, exactly 2.6 seconds before the touchdown, the aircraft’s high rate of descent remained at 1,100 feet per minute, triggering a ‘sink rate’ alert in the cockpit, the report says.The speed remained the same at less than 1 second before touchdown. This was way above the rate of descent for hard landing in the Bombardier’s manual. The precise pitch altitude of the aircraft at touchdown, the air speed, ground speed, the cockpit warnings, the weather condition, are all recorded. It also gives a list of areas that would be the focus of the investigation before the final report.Of course, each accident is different and usually caused by not just one but several factors, and the AI Boeing 171 crash investigation certainly seems more complicated than others, but like I said before, the report should respect the consumers’ right to full and accurate information on the cause of the crash.— The writer is a consumer affairs and rights expert

Air India crash report hides more than it reveals

Pushpa Girimaji

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