India Insights: Air India’s Boeing Nightmare - Ahmedabad Crash Rekindles Global Safety Fears
James Manning - PA Images
Another airplane crash has shocked the world as 2025 continues to bring news of misfortune and death.
In the early hours of June 12, 2025, Air India Flight AI 171, a Boeing 787‑8 Dreamliner, crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport en route to London Gatwick. CCTV footage shows the aircraft lifting off and, within 17–36 seconds, beginning a steep descent before slamming into a hostel building at B.J. Medical College, triggering multiple explosions and thick smoke.
The disaster claimed 241 lives onboard (including 230 passengers and 12 crew). However, there was a single survivor - British national Vishwashkumar Ramesh, from seat 11A, escaped death miraculously. At the site of the crash, at least 30–39 people were killed and dozens more injured by debris and fires.
In the immediate aftermath, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the site as investigations began to determine the cause. Both flight recorders were recovered, although one sustained visible damage and has been sent to the US for analysis and footage recovery.
With Boeing once again under scrutiny, this tragedy rekindles a broader debate: when a Boeing-built aircraft crashes in growing aviation markets like India, are systemic faults at play?
Boeing’s Growing Safety Crisis
Since the mid-2000s, Boeing’s reputation as a safety stalwart has increasingly come under scrutiny, starting most dramatically with the 737 MAX disasters. Lion Air Flight 610 (October 2018) and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 (March 2019) together claimed 346 lives.
According to investigations conducted post these crashes, a flawed MCAS system and “shortcuts in production quality” stood out as the main cause, bringing to light the growing safety concerns with Boeing. The jet was grounded globally for nearly 20 months, prompting a $2.5 billion settlement with the U.S. government and a damning congressional finding that Boeing’s “rush to build new aircraft as quickly as possible while cutting costs had jeopardized the safety of the flying public”.
Yet the nightmares didn’t stop. In January 2024, an Alaska Airlines 737-9 lost a mid-exit door plug mid-flight due to missing bolts, an assembly error traced back to factory shortcuts. That same year, production flaws came to light in the Dreamliner program: depressions in vertical tail fins, omitted structural fasteners, and “gaps at joints in the forward pressure bulkhead” in multiple 787s, triggering an FAA-mandated pause in deliveries and a withdrawal of Boeing’s self-inspection authority.
Multiple whistleblowers have since come forward to expose Boeing’s carelessness in manufacturing its planes. Former Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour alleged crews skipped fuselage‑joint inspections to meet quotas, an allegation Boeing continues to refute to date.
The latest Air India plane crash has once again brought Boeing under fire. To understand how passengers, airlines, and regulators might respond, we must ask: Is Boeing still up to the task of engineering trust?
India’s Aviation Boom And Regulatory Lag
There is no doubt that India’s aviation industry is fast-growing. India now ranks as the third-largest domestic airline market globally, supported by over 157 airports.
To meet this surge, airlines are rapidly expanding their fleets. The Air India group (Air India, Express, Vistara) carried 45.8 million domestic passengers in 2024, up from 39.5 million. In times like these, rapid growth can take precedence over safety checks.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) oversees safety, certification, and inspections, but faces capacity constraints. It has a history of issuing spot-check warnings, for instance, flagging overdue emergency slide inspections on an Air India aircraft just days before the recent crash. The DGCA initiated technical reviews of Air India’s Dreamliners immediately after the crash: by June 18, 24 of 33 aircraft were inspected, with a firm grip on training record audits.
India has previously seen Boeing-linked safety alerts. In 2022, Air India grounded Boeing 787s after a door plug detached mid-flight. While managed without casualties, the episode echoed global Boeing quality issues. Whistleblowers from Air India recently alleged that maintenance concerns about a Boeing 787 were raised a year before the Ahmedabad crash, yet went unaddressed.
India’s aviation growth is remarkable, but regulatory structures lag. Fleet expansions outpace DGCA’s inspection bandwidth. In this light, the Ahmedabad crash tests India’s ability to proactively enforce safety and hold both airlines and manufacturers accountable, before tragedies strike again.
What This Means For The Future?
The crash has triggered sweeping technical audits not only in India but around the world. While the DGCA continues to inspect airplanes in India, the Ministry of Civil Aviation is conducting a “comprehensive review of airline performance, passenger safety, and service protocols”.
Concerning the future of aviation since this crash, global scrutiny for Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers will intensify. Boeing and GE have withdrawn from the Paris Air Show to prioritize this probe. Meanwhile, Airbus continues to position itself as a more reliable choice, having secured over 2,000 orders in 2023, compared to Boeing’s slower pace. If Boeing is found at fault again, airlines, including IndiGo and others, may pivot toward Airbus.
The Ahmedabad crash is not just a tragic accident; it is a stark reminder of the fragile contract between progress and precaution. While the specific cause of Air India Flight AI 171’s failure is still under investigation, it now joins a string of unsettling incidents that cast a long shadow over Boeing’s reputation and the safety of commercial aviation itself.
For India, the implications run deeper. As the country’s aviation sector rises at breakneck speed, the infrastructure to regulate it, technically, culturally, and politically, risks lagging behind. The reliance on foreign aircraft like Boeing’s Dreamliners demands a higher threshold of scrutiny, transparency, and independent oversight.
This is not merely about one faulty plane or a single corporation. It is about how a nation balances ambition with accountability and whether passengers can truly trust the systems meant to keep them safe in the skies.
So now we must ask: as India takes flight into a new aviation era, can its safety standards rise just as high?
