A new bride from Rajasthan’s Balotra district flying to join her husband in London. A Bikaner businessman going to visit, for the first time in a decade, his family settled abroad. A doctor couple and their three young children, en route from Banswara to a much-dreamed-of new life. A 21-year-old flight attendant who belonged to strife-torn Manipur. A former chief minister on his way to visit his daughter. A medical student, in his hostel, eating lunch. They were among the over 240 lives cruelly cut short when a London-bound Air India flight crashed into a residential area in Ahmedabad on Thursday – a British national of Indian origin is the sole survivor. The video, showing the aircraft crashing into the hostel of BJ Medical College and Civil Hospital and exploding into a fireball, will remain scorched into a nation’s memory. The first wide-body aircraft crash of an Indian airline since the 1985 Kanishka bombing leaves behind stories of terrible grief and loss.
The day after, an impartial inquiry — involving Indian authorities, Boeing and international regulators — must be the priority. Till now, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, having flown over one billion passengers since its introduction in 2011, was considered to have a respectable safety record, even though technical issues like engine shutdowns, flight control failures, smoke in cabins and hydraulic leaks were flagged repeatedly. Quality control issues in 2019 forced the company to pause delivery of new aircraft between January 2021 and August 2022. A Boeing engineer filed a whistleblower complaint in 2024 with the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), alleging that it took shortcuts in the making of its 777 and 787 Dreamliner jets.
