AI-171 crash: Pilot’s father seeks SC probe

The 91-year-old father of late captain Sumeet Sabharwal, one of the pilots of the fatal AI-171 Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft that killed 260 people in June, approached the Supreme Court, seeking a court-monitored investigation into the crash. He demanded an investigation team of independent aviation experts headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, according to an NDTV report.

Pushkaraj Sabharwal has been named as the first petitioner, while the Federation of Indian Pilots has been named the second petitioner. The petitioners claimed that the investigation ordered by the Aviation Ministry and the preliminary report dated 15.06.2025 was defective.

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Fault in probe

Petitioners alleged that the investigation team had been focusing on the pilots, captain Sumeet Sabharwal and First Officer Clive Kundar. They both had incident-free flying records.

Sabharwal had a career spanning over 30 years with 8,596 hours of flying on Boeing 787-8 aircraft, without a single reported lapse or incident causing fatalities or otherwise. A preliminary report suggested human error led to the tragedy.

"The current approach of the investigation has resulted in a failure to adequately examine, or rule out, other more plausible technical and procedural factors that led to the tragedy,” media reports quoted the petition.

The petitioners reiterated that factual misdirection through selective disclosure, especially against crew who cannot defend themselves, impedes root cause discovery and threatens future flight safety-calling for a neutral judicial lens, NDTV reported.

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Probing team breached core principle

The petitioners argued that the formation of the five-member investigative team had breached a core principle of natural justice, which holds that no one should serve as a judge in their own case.

"The team is dominated by officers from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), aviation authorities whose procedures, oversight, and possible lapses are directly implicated in the investigation. Moreover, the officers are placed under the control of the DG, AAIB, thereby creating a situation where the very entities responsible for regulating and overseeing civil aviation are effectively investigating themselves," the petition read.

The Air India flight, travelling from Ahmedabad to Gatwick, UK, crashed a few seconds after take-off on June 12. Including 12 crew members, the flight carried 242 people. All of them died except a lone survivor, a British citizen. The aircraft crashed into the hostel of a medical college, killing another 19 people.

Also Read: Exclusive | Did Boeing’s machine fail in Air India 171 crash? A chilling sequence of possibilities

Cockpit conversation

A month after the accident, the AAIB published a preliminary report, mentioning a conversation between Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and First Officer Clive Kundar regarding fuel switches. In the cockpit, as per the report, a pilot was heard asking, "Why did you cut off?" And the other replied, "I didn't," referring to the fuel switches.

This conversation between the two piolts led to scepticism that a human-made error was behind the crash. Pilot associations have criticised the report. Earlier, while hearing another petition regarding the accident, the Supreme Court bench termed the ‘pilot error’ narrative ‘unfortunate’."