Air India AI171 B787 Crash: A Pilot’s Analysis

The tragic news of an Air India B787 crashing on departure from Ahmedabad this morning has shocked many around the world. This article aims to cut through the media noise and provide people with an early understanding of what may have caused this accident from a pilot’s point of view. I want to preface everything below with our most heartfelt thoughts being with the families of those impacted, including the pilots, who’s actions will be all too easy for the world’s media to judge.

The article is a dynamic one and will be updated as more information becomes available.

What We Know

Flight AI171 departed Ahmedabad on 12th June 2025 with 242 people on board on it’s way to Gatwick airport. It made it to an altitude of around 625ft, before descending into a residential area and crashing. Fatalities aren’t confirmed at the time of writing, but looking at the footage and the crash site, it’s unlikely there will be many survivors onboard, and there will likely be many casualties on the ground as well as some of those on the ground.

Early Analysis

It’s VERY early to draw conclusions, but there has been piece of footage already released that can show us a few key things.

From this footage, it looks like the aircraft simply doesn’t have the performance to continue flying. It does however, look like the pilots were very much at the controls and fighting until the end, as the nose is lifted higher as the aircraft descends closer to the ground, as if the pilots were trying to cushion the landing before disappearing from view.

My initial theories as to the potential reasons for the lack of performance are that either the aircraft stalled on take-off, or suffered a dual engine failure, or both. Let’s take a quick look at both possibilities and explore a bit more around them:

Stall On Take-off

Due to the amount of technology onboard, modern day airliners are extremely difficult to stall, the B787 included. It’s not, however, impossible. Unlike an Airbus, the Boeing 787 doesn’t appear to have any systems that actively prevent a stall, rather it offers the pilots multiple cue’s to help them recognise they’re nearing a stall state, and relies on the pilot to input the correct action to prevent a stall happening. It does offer a few ‘soft’ protections, but no outright overrides.

What could cause a stall on takeoff? Essentially it’s when the aircraft is not travelling fast enough through the air, for the given weight and configuration of the aircraft. Pilots will do ‘performance’ calculations before takeoff to work out the take-off and climb out speeds, using the current weather and aircraft weights. Inputting wrong figures, or conducting a take-off that wasn’t in-line with these calculations, could cause a stall. This could be a result of taking off from the wrong intersection on the runway, taking off in a different configuration as stated in the performance, or taking off in environmental conditions that didn’t match what you inputted into the performance software.

Clean Wing

One thing that really strikes me from the video is that the wing looks very ‘clean’, meaning there are no, or minimal flaps deployed. The video isn’t the best quality, so it’s hard to absolutely confirm this, but it certainly doesn’t look like like the wing is in a standard take-off configuration. For take-off, aircraft tend to have either the first of second stage of flaps deployed. This increases the lift the wing will give you at a given speed, ensuring you can climb away from the ground faster, and gives you better performance on shorter runways and in hot conditions.

Why could the wing be clean? Either the take-off flaps were never set in the first place, or they were retracted earlier than they should have been. Flaps aren’t retracted until at least 1000ft above the airfield. Given this aircraft only made it to 600ft, the flaps should still have been out.

If the wing is clean (no flaps deployed), the speed at which the aircraft will stall is greatly reduced. If the take-off performance figures were calculated based on flaps deployed for the departure, but then for whatever reason the flaps were not deployed, or retracted early, then it’s likely the aircraft could be put into a stalled state if trying to fly the same departure profile.

Landing Gear Down

Another thing that strikes me is that the landing gear is down. The landing gear is usually retracted at around 100ft, so it should have been retracted given the aircraft reached 600ft. There are a few reasons it could be down:

• The pilots extended the landing gear again when they realised they were going down. Although this would be a strange call to make, as it looks like the area they crashed into didn’t have anywhere to ‘land’ an airliner, and dropping the gear would create lots more drag, essentially bringing you down even faster.
• They forgot to, or were unable to retract it – this could fit in well with the theory of engine failure. During an engine failure their capacity may have been taken up with other things and the gear was forgotten. In the case of dual engine failure, there wouldn’t be enough hydraulic pressure available to raise the gear.
• They mistakenly retracted the flaps early, maybe instead of raising the gear. This fits in with the theory of a stall, or lack of performance. This is known as a ‘slip’, whereby you mean to do one thing, but do something else. If they retracted the flaps instead of raising the gear, the aircraft will be in a perelous position; no flaps to give the aicraft a higher stall margin, and gear still down causing huge drag and performance issues.
  

Engine Failure

Another genuine possibility is engine failure, either single or dual. With a single engine failure, the aircraft should still have been able to climb away from the ground. Dual engine failure would be a different story, especially that low to the ground. There’s not enough time to restart the engines, and it’s a case of damage limitation, just trying to put the aircraft down wherever will have the least loss of life.

While dual engine failure is very rare, it’s still a possibility. We saw it happen over the Hudson with US Airways flight 1549. Boeing’s 787 engines have faces lots of scrutiny over the past few years, with lots of the fleet being grounded due to engine issues. Although dual engine failure shouldn’t be ruled out at this stage, listening to the audio on the above footage, it sounds like the engines are running, and at quite a high thrust setting. If there was a catastrophic duel engine failure, you’d expect to hear less noise, or mechanical bangs and thuds as opposed to a normal jet engine sound.

Boeing

This is yet another major aviation accident involving a Boeing. Once again, it’s one of Boeing’s newest, state-of-the-art aircraft involved. It’s the first B787 crash, but not the first time one of their most up-to-date aircraft has been involved in a fatal accident recently.

Although it’s very unclear at this time whether this crash was caused by an aircraft issue, a crew issue, or a variety of other issues that may have nothing to do with the fact that it’s a Boeing, there’s no doubt that Boeing’s ever-worsening reputation when it comes to flight safety is going to be heavily under the spotlight once again.

What Happens Now?

Multiple air accident investigation groups will be sent to the crash site. Any countries with a connection to the crash will dispatch their own teams. The UK AAIB will be dispatched as there were Brits onboard, and some of the component of the aircraft are also British.

Over the next few days, the crash site will be examined thoroughly, before removing the wreckage of the aircraft to somewhere that investigators can spend even longer examining. The aircrafts black box will be recovered, giving investigators access to the cockpit voice recordings and all data recorded from the aircraft’s computers leading up to the accident.