Many unanswered questions around 1st ‘hull loss’ after Kanishka bombing

The tragic Thursday crash of an Ahmedabad-London Air India aircraft has triggered a volley of questions around flight safety, given the solid record of Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner as a sturdy and reliable flying machine. Advertisement The scale of the tragedy is evident from the fact that this is the first wide-body aircraft crash for an Indian airline since the June 1985 Kanishka bombing, which involved Boeing 747-237 B. "This is clearly the first hull loss for a Boeing 787, a machine I can swear by. But behind every machine involved in aviation is a man working in some department. The principal task of the investigators is to determine which department went off-centre for this humongous tragedy to happen," Mohan Shyam, a Mumbai-based aviation expert with over 30 years of experience in the sector, told The Tribune today. Advertisement With over 19,000 hours of flying experience behind him, Mohan, a flight instructor and trainer with long years of service in Jet Airways and IndiGo, says the Boeing 787 has been involved in minor incidents, but this tragedy is the gravest. "Hull loss means an aviation accident that damages the aircraft beyond economic repair, resulting in a near total loss. It is over to the investigators now," he said, noting that India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, the apex probe body for serious air accidents, would conduct the probe since the jurisdiction for the investigation is India's. Advertisement The bureau is under the Civil Aviation Ministry and its teams are already in Ahmedabad to collect evidence. Since the plane, manufactured by the US' Boeing, crashed in India, the jurisdiction for a probe is with India though Boeing has offered to assist and the outcomes would also be shared with it later. Mohan said after the crash, the immediate priority of investigators would be to retrieve two very important components of the aircraft — the cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight data recorder. "The cockpit voice recorder will throw light on what went on inside the cockpit with the pilots and the flight recorder will tell what went on inside the plane. These are key pieces of evidence," Mohan said, adding that the lone survivor could help unravel the crash mystery. What is hull loss? Hull loss means an aviation accident that damages the aircraft beyond economic repair, resulting in a near total loss. On unanswered questions, the top expert listed a vast range. "How was the weather impacting the flight? Were all the flight cautions taken? Multiple layers of aviation processes will need to be probed, from immigration, customs and security to engineering, air, cabin crew and refuelling personnel. Were there any dangerous goods on board? Any ATC error or pilot fatigue? Was there any sabotage?" Mohan said. He said the investigators would look at the crash from the prism of the Swiss Cheese Model, a framework developed by James Reason, a leading figure in aviation safety. "This model explains how accidents occur in complex systems like aviation. It likens safety systems to multiple layers of Swiss cheese, where each slice represents a defence against risk, and holes represent potential failures or weaknesses. An accident occurs when holes in multiple layers align, allowing a hazard to pass through all defences," he explained. Asked if it was easy to recover the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorded after such a tragic crash, Mohan said yes. "Over the years, the sector has evolved enough for manufacturers to place these devices in locations where the damage is minimum. Aviation is the latest mode of transport and makers realise that data boxes need to be strengthened with metallurgy, so that in case of accidents such as today's, the equipment holds its integrity," the expert explained.