Ahmedabad plane crash: 'Deja vu' as Air India AI-171 disaster recalls 1978 'Emperor Ashoka' tragedy

The tragic crash of Air India flight AI-171 on June 12, when a wide-body Boeing Dreamliner went down shortly after take-off in Ahmedabad, draws eerie parallels to the January 1, 1978 disaster involving Air India flight AI-855, ‘Emperor Ashoka’, which crashed into the Arabian Sea after departing Mumbai airport 47 years ago. Both the flights ended catastrophically within minutes or even seconds of departure, killing almost all on board.

Air India’s first Boeing 747 departed for Dubai from Mumbai on 1 January 1978 at 8:12 pm. It had 190 passengers and 23 crew members onboard. In less than two minutes after take-off, the aircraft, with all 213 people on board, crashed into the sea 3 km off the coast, according to a report. Nobody could survive the crash. The official report, after investigation, blamed a faulty Attitude Direction Indicator (ADI) as well as the captain’s spatial disorientation.

Captain Madan Lal Kukar, who had over 17,800 flight hours, relied on a malfunctioning ADI that had incorrectly shown a right bank. The First Officer was Indu Virmani, 43, a former Indian Air Force commander with over 4,500 flight hours. In darkness, and without the help of external visual cues, he made opposite control inputs, unaware the aircraft was level. Within about 101 seconds, the plane banked 108 degrees left, ultimately crashing into 10-metre-deep waters.

"My instruments,'' the pilot said suddenly, according to the recorder recovered from the wreckage. "Mine is also toppled," said the co-pilot. "No, but go by this, captain," Flight Engineer Faria said. A 1982 New York Times report stated, the official investigation concluded the probable cause was: "Irrational control wheel inputs given by the captain following complete unawareness of the attitude of the aircraft on his part after his ADI. had malfunctioned."

Forty-seven years later, Flight AI-171 took off from Ahmedabad bound for London in the afternoon of June 12. Moments later, it crashed into a medical college building near the airport. Of the 242 people on board, 241 were killed. The crash also caused several deaths on the ground, raising the death toll to at least 274.

Both aircraft were wide-body jets. Both crashes occurred within minutes of take-off and within 3 km of the airport. Like AI 855, AI-171 plunged near the airport, this time into a residential area. Both the incidents involved extremely high fatalities with near-total loss of life. In both cases, technical or human error during the early climb phase may have played a role.

According to NDTV, Veteran pilot Rakesh Rai who flew the same kind of Dreamliner, noted the landing gear of AI-171 was not retracted during its brief flight. This anomaly suggests that something went wrong almost immediately. He also explained that the standard take-off involves retracting the gear once a positive rate of climb is confirmed—something that did not happen here. Only one passenger, seated in 11A, survived in the Ahmedabad plane crash. A formal investigation is underway.