Chairman of Air India and the Tata Group, N Chandrasekaran spoke to Times Now's Navika Kumar in the 1st and biggest exclusive interview since the Ahmedabad AI-171 crash. Over 270 people died in the horrific tragedy of June 12. Who is to blame? Navika Kumar questions N Chandrasekaran over Air India's chequered record with the DGCA. What did the Tata Sons chairman reveal? Watch the video to catch the top 7 moments.
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Questions asked in this interview
6
0:00Where were you when you first got the information?
2:42Did you initially hope that there would be some survivors or did you from the word go know that it was a bad crash?
3:18What would you say to them today, these people?
We can only see our records. Were there any red flags? Were there any maintenance red flags that had been put out by DGCA? We understand two short seen this. I have seen this record for these aircraft and the engines and the pilot record. There are some reports that say that June 3rd and June 5th there were two show cause notices from the DGCA. There are two questions that are being speculated on. There are only 2% of air crashes worldwide where the crash happens in the ascending period of the aircraft. Only 2%. And this AI 171 was one of those flights where while taking off the crash happened with such low data in terms of percentage probability what happened? See, Navika, as he said I am not an expert to be able to decipher this. The Dreamliners are suddenly the bad boys in the fleet. There have been whistleblowers in the past who have raised many questions about the safety norms followed by Dreamliners. We meet in difficult times at a time when this country has seen probably the worst air crash in recent times. At a time we can still hear probably the cries of help that may have gone out at that time. I want to ask you Mr. Chandrasekaran, you said this was the most difficult time that you and your company have faced. Where were you when you first got the information?
On June 12th, on that day, I was in Bombay in my office. I was in an internal meeting when I first heard the news. It was quite shocking and something that is incomprehensible that suddenly you heard. And it took me a few seconds to gather myself and then immediately I rushed to the airport to fly to Ahmedabad. And you know you're dealing with it. People are calling you at the same time. Because people want to know more. People think that I would know more but I was actually like anyone else. So that's what happened.
No, no. I was like everyone else, hoping that people will survive. You were praying like everyone else, God what is happening, and somehow you hoped that people will survive because you have not seen the site. You were only hearing stories. So I was only hoping that damage will be there but their people will survive or how many will survive. These were thoughts that were going through my mind.
You must have read these stories too. There was the Jooshi family. The father was settled in London, UK, was coming back to pick up the wife and their three children. Those pictures have been there across social media, across various media, and the entire family was wiped out. Then there is the case of Arjun Manubhai Poleia who came to just give his wife's ashes away. She had died earlier. He had left his two daughters, 8 and 12, back in London only to do the last rites of his wife, and now his children are orphaned. What would you say to them today, these people?
I think it is the most horrific story that you can ever hear. It is such a heart-wrenching situation. It's very very difficult to console anyone who has lost a mother, a father, a husband, a wife, a son, it is very very difficult to console. Whatever you may say, it cannot be sufficient enough to console them from this loss. So all I can say is that I grieve with them as much as they do. And when I say this, I mean it for me and all my Tata colleagues. We just want to consider them as part of the Tata family for life. But there is no life. It is they have gone. But the families that they live today, we just have to be with them. All we can promise is we will be with them and I will be with them. But it's very very hard to console.
Chandrasekaran, N. (2025, June 18). AI-171 Crash: N Chandrasekaran Interview| Navika Questions Air India Chairman| Watch Top 7 Moments [Interview transcript]. Times Now. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1084364/
MLA
N. Chandrasekaran. "AI-171 Crash: N Chandrasekaran Interview| Navika Questions Air India Chairman| Watch Top 7 Moments." Times Now, 18 Jun. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1084364/.
BibTeX
@misc{chandrasekaran2025_1084364,
author = {N. Chandrasekaran},
title = {AI-171 Crash: N Chandrasekaran Interview| Navika Questions Air India Chairman| Watch Top 7 Moments},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Times Now. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {jun},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1084364/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
