AI 171 crash: Aviation minister rebuts foreign media claims

NEW DELHI: Union aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu Sunday urged western media to avoid speculation and appreciated AAIB for decoding black box data in India.

“AAIB has made an appeal to all, especially western media houses, which may have a vested interest in the kind of articles they are trying to publish. I believe in AAIB. I believe in the work that they are doing. They have done a wonderful job in decoding the whole black box and getting the data out in India itself,” he said. He reiterated govt will await the final report before drawing any conclusions.

Govt has been firefighting over the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau’s (AAIB) slammed-by-most preliminary probe into the deadly June 12 Air India AI 171 crash. While the report did not reveal cockpit voice recorder (CVR) transcript of the critical seconds, the western media started giving out those alleged details regularly a full 44 hours before the AAIB report was released on July 12 — which are yet to be denied by AAIB. The western reports have blamed AI 171 captain for the crash. The solitary selective indirect CVR quote in AAIB report also has one pilot asking the other why he switched off the fuel supply to engines.

Naidu termed this decoding a major achievement as earlier black boxes had to be sent abroad to retrieve data. “But this is the first time that successfully AAIB has decoded everything. The preliminary report has also been seen,” he said and urged against coming to conclusions before the final report is out.