Air India suspends some long-haul flights after fatal crash and reduces the frequency of others
The airline's chairman has insisted the Boeing 787-8 aircraft travelling from Ahmedabad to Gatwick had a "clean history".
Thursday 19 June 2025 20:57, UK
Air India has confirmed it is suspending some of its long-haul flights from Saturday, including routes using the same type of Boeing aircraft which crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad.
The decision follows last Thursday's fatal crash involving a Boeing 787-8 flight from Ahmedabad to Gatwick.
All but one of the 242 people on board were killed, with around 30 fatalities on the ground, in the world's worst aviation disaster in a decade.
It was confirmed on Wednesday that the sole survivor, a British national, had left hospital.
Most temporary reductions will last until at least mid-July, affecting both 787 and 777 aircraft types, and includes routes to Gatwick.
The firm said in a statement it was cutting international services because of "enhanced pre-flight safety checks" and to accommodate "additional flight durations arising from airspace closures in the Middle East".
Routes between Delhi-Nairobi, Amritsar-Gatwick and Goa-Gatwick are being suspended entirely.
The frequency of other services will also be reduced from Delhi, Bengaluru and Amritsar to certain destinations in North America, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Europe - including Heathrow and Birmingham.
The route between Ahmedabad and Gatwick remains unaffected.
Air India has apologised and promised to contact affected passengers to offer alternative flights or refunds.
The airline's chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran on Wednesday insisted the Boeing 787-8 aircraft had a "clean history".
"The right engine was a new engine put in [in] March 2025. The left engine was last serviced in 2023 and was due [its] next maintenance check in December 2025," he told the Indian channel ..
Meanwhile, India's aviation regulator has issued warning notices to Air India for breaching safety rules after three of its Airbus planes flew despite being overdue checks on emergency slides and for being slow to address the issue, according to news agency Reuters.
The warning notices and an investigation report were not in any way related to last week's crash and were sent days before that incident.
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The government has also said there has not been any decision yet on where the flight data recorders, also called black boxes, will be analysed.
Indian newspaper The Economic Times reported that they were due to be sent to the US so the data could be extracted, as they had suffered fire damage and could not be analysed in India.
The government said in a statement that India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) would decide where the recorders would be examined after making a "due assessment" of all technical, safety and security considerations.
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Black boxes have two components - the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder - and provide crucial insights for crash investigators.
They include altitude, airspeed, the status of controls and pilot conversations which help determine probable causes of crashes.