Inside Air India’s First 24 Hours of Crisis Response

Skift’s coverage of the Air India crash is offered free to all readers.

Air India CEO Campbell Wilson boarded AI143 on Thursday for the 1 PM flight from Delhi to Charles de Gaulle airport to participate in the upcoming Paris Air Show. He may have been planning to share good news: Reuters had reported earlier this month that Air India was in discussions for a major order of 200 narrowbody aircraft.

But just 15 minutes after his departure, at 1:39 pm, another Air India flight, AI 171, took off from Ahmedabad. It crashed within minutes. The Boeing 787-8 aircraft had 230 passengers and 12 crew on board, and only one survivor. Registered as VT-ANB, it had rotated all across the network in recent weeks, with flights to Paris, Tokyo, Melbourne, Milan, and Frankfurt.

Campbell’s plane was not equipped with internet connectivity, so word must have been sent to Wilson via the cockpit. The plane turned around to head back to Delhi. We don’t know who made that extraordinary call: Wilson or someone else at Air India. But the plane was back on the ground in Delhi at 4 PM local time.

The plane that crashed was in the command of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, who had clocked over 8,200 flying hours and was also a line training captain for the airline. His co-pilot had over 1,100 flight hours.

Seconds after take off, a mayday call was made to the ATC, after which the aircraft crashed into the nearby medical college hostel.

By the time Wilson landed in Delhi, the airline had confirmed the incident and set up a hotline. The airline’s website and social media handles had turned from red to gray and black, to indicate mourning.

Wilson rushed to the Emergency Command Centre at the Air India headquarters in Gurugram, where he took stock of the situation and recorded a 2.5 minute video that was released at 7:15pm local time. The message: It was not the time for speculation but rather accurate information. And the airline will cooperate in all possible ways with those affected, and the investigation.

By the evening, Campbell was headed to Ahmedabad where the airline is cooperating with the investigation, and providing technical assistance. On Friday morning, he visited the site of the crash.

Over 30 technical staff from Air India are currently in Ahmedabad to provide assistance to the recovery and investigation process. The investigation will be led by the Air Accidents Investigation Bureau (AAIB), the Indian authority for aviation incidents. The U.S. National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) and the Air Accidents Investigation Branch of the UK have deployed their teams to join the investigation.

Apart from recovery, Air India is also leading the caregiving at Ahmedabad, along with the Tata Group, whose Chairman (also Air India’s Chairman), N Chandrasekharan, announced immediate financial assistance of over $116,000 on behalf of the Tata Sons for the families of everyone who lost their life in the crash.

After 28 hours, it was confirmed that the vital Digital Voice and Data Recorder (DVDR) had been retrieved, which would aid the investigation into the accident. The DVDR is a device that combines both Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and Flight Data Recorder (FDR) capabilities into a single unit, and would hold a clue as to what went down in the final moments before the flight.