At the July 28 hearing, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the government, assured the Supreme Court that the AAIB would complete its work by mid-September, with a buffer extending through the end of October 2026. The AAIB’s affidavit confirmed that it expected to submit the draft final report by October. The court accepted this timeline and deferred any decision on an independent investigation or a Court of Inquiry until it received the report. We are now at the end of that buffer.
The phrase to watch is “draft final report.” Under ICAO Annex 13, the investigating State circulates a draft to accredited representatives, including the NTSB, BEA, and AAIB-UK, for comment before finalising the report. The AAIB has said the October target reflects the time needed for technical analysis and international consultation before the public release. Whatever lands on the bench may be substantive, but it is not the final word. The final report may still be months away.
The court has also deliberately held back. It deferred the petitions seeking a Court of Inquiry without dismissing them, saying it would consider them once it had assessed the AAIB’s findings for credibility and completeness. The court also directed the AAIB to consider the Federation of Indian Pilots’ technical submission regarding the timing of the RAT deployment.
The two most contentious issues are unlikely to be settled publicly any time soon. The first concerns the CVR. The AAIB has argued that there is an “absolute statutory prohibition” on releasing cockpit voice and airborne image recordings to any external committee or the public. That is correct for the raw recordings. But Annex 13 is equally clear that portions of the record pertinent to the analysis belong in the final report, and only those not essential to it remain protected. The AAIB has already exercised that latitude once. The preliminary report placed the fuel control switches moving from RUN to CUTOFF about three seconds after liftoff and quoted a single exchange in which one pilot asked the other why he had cut off, and the other denied it. That one line has fuelled more than a year of speculation. Now that it has been released, the AAIB owes the families and the profession context. Take-off is a sterile-cockpit phase, during which only matters pertinent to the flight should be discussed. A transcript extract from the take-off roll to the end of the recording would therefore contain little private information and almost nothing that isn’t pertinent. The final report should include it. Anything less leaves a narrative built on one sentence.
The backdrop has not helped. On August 4, AI 2379, an A320neo flying from Phuket to Delhi, briefly lost all three hydraulic systems at FL360. The aircraft climbed 372 ft, stalled for two seconds, then dropped 292 ft, injuring 24 people. The AAIB’s preliminary report found that the captain tested positive for a psychoactive substance and described this as a serious concern requiring priority action by the DGCA. Air India terminated him that same day. However, the report found no causal link between the test result and the hydraulic event. Investigators are still determining whether pressure was actually lost or whether the indications were erroneous. The first officer, who was flying the aircraft, tested negative.
Weeks later, on September 30, flydubai FZ1073 (Dubai–Tel Aviv) turned into a nightmare. The UAE prosecutor general said the co-pilot attacked the Indian captain, Smit Machchhar, with the crash axe and attempted to seize control of the aircraft. The prosecutor characterised the incident as an attempted terrorist act. Reports suggest Oman had previously barred the co-pilot from flying over concerns about radical views. However, the motive has not been officially established.
So here is the question I keep returning to. With pilot conduct under this kind of global scrutiny, will the AAIB be willing to state its findings on AI 171 categorically? If the evidence points to the flight deck, there will be enormous pressure to soften the language. That pressure would come from the families, the pilot community, and a court that has already called the selective early leaks irresponsible. If the evidence points to the aircraft, the pressure would run the other way, towards Boeing, GE, and the entire 787 fleet. Either way, the credibility of Indian accident investigation is on the line. An ambiguous report would satisfy no one and achieve nothing.
Hopefully, we’ll have some clarity in the next couple of weeks, if the Supreme Court decides to make the report—or at least its findings—public.
Author: G R Mohan
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