Many unanswered questions around 1st ‘hull loss’ after Kanishka bombing

The tragic Thursday crash of an Ahmedabad-London Air India aircraft has triggered a volley of questions around flight safety, given the solid record of Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner as a sturdy and reliable flying machine.

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The scale of the tragedy is evident from the fact that this is the first wide-body aircraft crash for an Indian airline since the 1985 Kanishka bombing which involved Boeing 747-237 B.

"This is clearly the first hull loss for a Boeing 787, a machine I can swear by. But behind every machine involved in flight safety are men across multiple departments. The task of investigators is to find out which department has gone off centre for this humongous tragedy to happen," Mohan Shyam, a Mumbai based aviation expert with over 30 years experience in the sector told The Tribune today.

With 19,000 hours of flying experience behind him, Mohan, a flight instructor and trainer, says Boeing 787 has been involved in minor incidents but this tragedy is the gravest.

"Hull loss means an aviation accident that damages the aircraft beyond economic repair, resulting in a near total loss. It is over to the investigators now," he said, noting that India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, the apex probe body for serious air accidents, will conduct the probe since the jurisdiction for the investigation is India's.

The plane, manufactured by US' Boeing, has crashed in India and this determines India's jurisdiction for the probe although Boeing will assist and India will also share its findings with the manufacturer later.

Mohan said immediately, two very important components of the aircraft will need to be recovered — the cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight data recorder.

"Cockpit voice recorder will throw light on what went on inside the cockpit with the pilots and the flight recorder will tell what went on inside the plane. These are key pieces of evidence," Mohan said, adding that the lone survivor would be key to unravelling the crash mystery.

On unanswered questions, the expert listed a range.

"How was the weather impacting the flight? Were all flight cautions taken? Multiple layers of the aviation process will need to be probed from immigration, customs, security, engineering to air and cabin crew, refuelling personnel. Were any dangerous goods on board, any ATC error or pilot fatigue? Was there any sabotage?" Mohan asked.

He said the investigators will look at the crash from the prism of the Swiss Cheese Model, a framework developed by James Reason, a leading figure in aviation safety.

"This model explains how accidents occur in complex systems like aviation. It likens safety systems to multiple layers of Swiss cheese, where each slice represents a defence against risk, and holes represent potential failures or weaknesses. An accident occurs when holes in multiple layers align, allowing a hazard to pass through all defences," Mohan explained.

Asked if it was easy to recover cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorded in such a tragic crash, Mohan said that over a period of years, the sector has evolved enough for manufacturers to place these devices in locations where the damage is minimum.

"Aviation is the latest mode of transport and makers realise that data boxes need to be strengthened with metallurgy so that in case of accidents such as today's the equipment holds its integrity," said the expert.