NEW DELHI: International Aviation watchdog, The Foundation for Aviation Safety, has hit out at the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) over its alleged continued lack of transparency and its overt failure to comply with international accident investigation standards." AAIB is working on the final investigation report into the AI 171 crash on June 12, 2025, which left 260 dead.
In a letter to the Director General of AAIB, GVG Yugandhar, on August 27, the Executive Director of the Foundation, Ed Pierson, has criticised the AAIB for not making public crucial documents regarding the Boeing 787 model.
Referring to the 100-odd official non-public documents that it had sent AAIB through its UK expert, the foundation states they are vital to reconstruct the operational history of the doomed airplane.
"This data is undeniably relevant to determining the potential causal factors of this horrific crash that took the lives of 260 people.These documents explicitly detail chronic, systemic aircraft failures involving the airplane’s electrical, electronic, and/or flight computer systems," it says .
Under International Civil Aviation Organisarion Annex 13, Section 5, an investigation state is mandated to gather, record, and analys e all relevant information, it points out.
"The fact AAIB has never even acknowledged the existence of these critical documents in either the initial Preliminary Report, the subsequent Interim Report, or ever since is an egregious breach of this international obligation."
Meanwhile, “unknowing passengers and flight crew continue to board 787 airplanes, completely unaware of the potential hazards,” the Foundation pointed out.
All these documents were immediately available to Air India and Boeing from the moment Air India 171 crashed, it said.
"The AAIB should have possessed and scrutinised this data within days of initiating the investigation. Furthermore, the airplane’s ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) and AHM (Airplane Health Management) data streams contain a wealth of critically important information that points to not only aircraft systems failures on VT-ANB, but precise timing of specific failure events that occurred leading up to the disaster. None of this information has been released to the public either,* the watchdog said.
By actively withholding this information from public announcements, the AAIB is failing its primary objective: the prevention of future accidents through timely, transparent safety disclosures, the letter charged. "Most critically, despite being in possession of evidence pointing to chronic and dangerous system failures, the AAIB has issued zero interim safety recommendations or warnings to the global aviation community. It is concerning to know that India's AAIB is apparently quite comfortable insinuating one of the pilots is to blame, but yet AAIB does not feel a compelling need to provide available facts or warn the public.
The foundation posed these queries: Why has this vital safety information been suppressed? Why have no urgent safety recommendations been issued by the AAIB or any other party on the investigation team to protect the flying public?
The global aviation community expects adherence to ICAO standards, not "systemic obfuscation," the Foundation charged. "We demand an immediate, formal explanation for these omissions and a commitment to integrating these critical documents into the active public record of this investigation," it stated, adding the families of those who lost their lives and the flying public deserve an honest and comprehensive investigation.