Post Ahmedabad plane crash, these three things led to cancellations of Air India flights

Following the Ahmedabad plane crash on June 12, many Air India flights were delayed or cancelled. In a recent interview that came 6 days after the incident, N Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons and Air India, highlighted three issues concerning the matter pertaining to the airlines.

Speaking to news outlet Times Now, Chandrasekaran said, "There are more than 1100 flights that we fly every day. And in the last six days, there have been in general, anywhere from 5 to 16 or 18 flights, depending on the day, that have been cancelled. Second, what has happened in this period of six days. There are three things at work. The first thing is, we have had to go through the DGCA checks. The moment the accident happened on the 12th, DGCA mandated additional checks to be done on all the 787s. So, we have had to ground many 787s, and as a result, we are short of aircraft,t and we have to cancel those flights. That is one cause. 24 of the 33 aircraft have gone through checks.”

He continued, “The second reason is that because of the Iran conflict, the airspace there has been closed. Flights, therefore, have had to be diverted. When the flights are diverted, many of the flights get cancelled.”

He further added, “The third is technical issues. And when we do, when we take off and land in any destination, you must know that we will be doing line checks. And every now and then, it is common for the line checks to find some spare part to be changed, for instance. This is not the case on every flight, but it does happen."

The crash claimed several lives, both onboard the flight and those in the medical college hostel, where young doctors were having their meal. Even those around the accident site were heavily impacted. The black box has been recovered from the aircraft, Chandrasekaran said it could take a month for preliminary findings to be disclosed. During the interview, he also mentioned that the plane under scrutiny, AI-171, had a clean history and no irregularities had been flagged in the past.