Fourteen months after the Ahmedabad crash, India's accident bureau still has no final report

Air India flight 171, a Boeing 787-8 registered VT-ANB, crashed about 32 seconds after taking off from Ahmedabad for London Gatwick on 12 June 2025. Of the 242 people on board, 241 died. Nineteen people on the ground were killed. One passenger survived. Fourteen months later there is no final report, and the document that everyone argues about is a preliminary one that carefully declines to conclude anything.

India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau published that preliminary report on 11 July 2025. Its central factual finding is narrow and precise. Both engine fuel control switches moved from RUN to CUTOFF, one second apart, roughly three seconds after liftoff, at a maximum recorded airspeed of about 180 knots. Both engines shut down. The switches were returned to RUN some 10 to 14 seconds later. One engine had begun to respool; the other relit but its core speed continued to decay while its engine control unit added fuel in an attempt to recover. The report records a cockpit exchange in which one pilot asked the other why he had performed the cutoff, and the other said he had not. It does not identify which pilot said which. It identified no mechanical or maintenance fault, and it issued no safety recommendations to operators or manufacturers of the 787-8 or the GEnx-1B engine.

That last point is the one most often skipped. An investigating authority that had found a defect would recommend something. An investigating authority that had concluded the crew acted deliberately would ordinarily not be silent either. The AAIB did neither, and fourteen months on it still has not.

The report drew attention to an existing advisory. The United States Federal Aviation Administration issued Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin NM-18-33 concerning potential disengagement of the fuel control switch locking feature on several Boeing types including the 787. The date of that bulletin is itself contested in the record: Wikipedia's account gives 17 December 2018, while the European Union Aviation Safety Agency's own listing of the bulletin gives 11 January 2019 and lists the affected models as the Boeing 717, 737, 747, 757, 767, 787, MD-11 and MD-90. A safety information bulletin of this kind is advisory rather than mandatory, and Air India had not carried out the recommended inspections for that reason.

Institutional responses hardened quickly around a version the document does not support. FAA administrator Bryan Bedford said on 11 July 2025 that the agency felt very comfortable that this was not an issue with inadvertent manipulation of the fuel control switches. Boeing issued a multi operator message saying it was not recommending any action based on the preliminary report. The Indian Commercial Pilots' Association attacked what it called a reckless and unfounded insinuation of pilot suicide, an insinuation that appears in commentary rather than in the report. On 7 November 2025 the Supreme Court of India observed that the preliminary report contained no insinuation against the pilot, and merely recorded the communication between the two pilots without apportioning blame.

On 14 June 2026 the AAIB filed a counter affidavit in the Supreme Court opposing a petition for an independent judicial inquiry. It said the investigation would conclude within approximately six weeks and that a draft final report was expected in October 2026. It described itself as still in the evidence collection, technical examination and forensic examination phase, and listed completed work including wreckage analysis, flight recorder review, crew medical and training records, a psychological autopsy, and interviews with pilots, cabin crew, air traffic controllers and human factors specialists. It refused to release cockpit voice recordings and airborne images, citing what it called an absolute statutory prohibition under rules 17(1) and 17(5) of the Aircraft (Investigation of Accidents and Incidents) Rules, 2025. On 15 July 2026 the October estimate was restated. General Electric sent engine analysis reports on 24 June 2026.

Two days before that affidavit, on the first anniversary, 30 bereaved families wrote asking for regular updates, independent simulator testing, an experienced line pilot on the investigation team and a firm date for release. That letter is the clearest statement of what the delay costs.

The AAIB was established by order on 30 July 2012 and operates under accident investigation rules that took effect on 5 July 2012, created expressly so that India would comply with the International Civil Aviation Organization's Annex 13 standards and separate investigation from the regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. Annex 13 is frequently cited as expecting a final report within twelve months of an accident. This report does not assert that, because the text of Annex 13 could not be opened for it. What can be said without dispute is that the draft is now expected roughly sixteen months after the crash.

What is not known is whether the October 2026 draft will identify a cause, whether it will carry safety recommendations, whether the Supreme Court will order any part of it disclosed to the families, and whether operators of the 787-8 will be asked to do anything at all. Until then the only official finding about AI-171 remains a sequence of switch movements that nobody has explained.