Pilots Body Rejects Interim Report on Air India Crash
The Federation of Indian Pilots has urged the government not to let the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau issue an interim report on the June 12, 2025 air india crash in Ahmedabad just to meet the one-year deadline for the final inquiry. Captain CS Randhawa said the move could add confusion while the investigation is still active.
Randhawa's Letter To New Delhi
The federation sent a detailed report on Friday to the Prime Minister’s Office, the Civil Aviation Ministry, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation and the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau. In that letter, Randhawa wrote: "The Annex 13 of the ICAO does not stipulate that the investigative agency needs to submit an 'Interim Report'. Submitting it will lead to greater confusion and speculation. Such an action could be detrimental to the investigations being done by the AAIB. Moreover, such a report cannot be conclusive due to further investigations being carried out. Thus, please do not take out the interim report in the overall interest of safety."
Randhawa also wrote: "Electrical disturbance involving abnormal current flow, arcing, insulation breakdown, or grounding-path current could propagate into the Boeing 787 Common Core avionics/network environment." The federation attached ACARS maintenance messages and a reference to a publicly available US patent relating to FADEC and fuel-metering fail-safe logic.
Ahmedabad Crash Figures
The crash in Ahmedabad killed 260 people. There were 241 people on board the Dreamliner plane, and only one passenger survived. The federation says those figures make the reporting timeline especially sensitive because the final inquiry report is required under International Civil Aviation Organisation rules to be submitted at the earliest or within a maximum period of 12 months after the accident date.
Reports have emerged that the AAIB may submit an interim report to meet that deadline, which expires on June 12, 2026. Randhawa said such a report would not be conclusive while further investigations continue, and the federation said the evidence it attached points to a rebuttal of the pilot suicide theory being explored by the AAIB.
AAIB Deadline Approaches
The most immediate next step is the final inquiry timetable already set by ICAO rules, with June 12, 2026 as the deadline. The federation’s filing leaves the government, the DGCA and the AAIB with a clear choice over whether to press ahead with an interim report or wait for the fuller investigation to run its course.
