N Chandrasekaran First & Exclusive Interview After Air India Plane Crash | What Exactly Happened?

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.

It is a call that I got from someone. Hey Chandra, what is happening? Then immediately I went out and my assistant was there. She switched on the TV and but I didn't wait for anything and immediately I rushed.

I knew immediately I have to go to Ahmedabad. So I asked the office to immediately arrange the flight. I will go to the airport and then I started making calls as I was leaving office sitting in the car and going to the airport. I was making calls to Air India, making calls to our people in Gujarat, our manager in Gujarat. There are many companies and so getting information piece by piece and by the time I reach the airport and getting into the flight I knew the enormity and I was also watching online and taking calls and trying to assemble people and you know it was a very difficult situation. And so I was trying to think what should I be doing immediately the thought came to me that immediately what we need is we need a response team on the ground and we need to have people I didn't know how many Air India people will be there so my thought was while I called our India people I also called all our Tata colleagues 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 was hoping that people will survive. You were praying like everyone else. God what is happening and you know somehow you hoped that people will survive because you have not seen the site you are only hearing stories. So I was only hoping that the image will be there but the people will survive or how many will survive. These were thoughts that were going through my mind.

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 because you can't get the life back.

So there are structures we want to put in place. One of the things that we have been thinking is to create a say for example a trust and then which will be available to them to look after but there are many things it's only not the financial need there may be other needs so we've got to think through and then create the trust and other functioning infrastructure so that we can be with this family some will not need any help. Some will need some kind of a help. Some will need emotional help. We don't know. We will we have to find this out. But the point is it could happen in one of us. It is very very hard to explain what these people will be going through and it's very hard for us to console.

It is an extremely difficult situation where I have no words to express to console any one of them. I just deeply regret that this whole accident happened. And I feel very sorry and all we can do is to be with them at this time. We grieve with them and we do everything we can.

I only so far met the lone survivor and now we plan to visit as many families as possible myself and between me and my colleagues we intend to visit all the families. But now currently our job is to help the families to come to Ahmedabad, collect the remains and provide them some brief counseling and then all the way to the final rites. Currently that is what we are doing. We have one Tata colleague as an angel deployed to work with each family. And there are 400 Tata people across companies in Ahmedabad. And what we are trying to do is to be with each of these families in the next few days to get through this stage. Then we need to meet them. We need to support them. We need to see what we can do and what we need to do.

See this is a crisis or a tragedy of a gigantic proportion. It has affected everybody. Yes, the families are affected but the whole country is affected in a manner of speaking. There is a lot of fear. There is a lot of anger. I can understand that personally. I have also traveled a lot in my life. I used to travel 200 days internationally a year for 20 years and I have faced flight diversions, flight cancellations, all kinds of issues and every time one small thing happens you get affected and this I can understand what is the level of fear that would have set in. So everyone wants to know what happened and I can tell you I also want to know the same. Unless or otherwise we know what happened. There is no hope to fix it so that it doesn't happen again. If you know what has happened then there is a chance to fix it so that it doesn't happen again. But we have to go through the process. Airline systems are quite complex and airlines have been built with lot of redundancy. If such redundancies are not there, these kind of incidents can happen very often. So the fact that these are rarity is because such systems are there. But still this occurred. So unless or otherwise we wait for the investigation we can get into a lot of speculations. There are speculations about human error, speculation about airlines, speculation about engines, maintenance, all kinds. There are a lot of speculations and a lot of theories. But the fact that I know so far is this particular aircraft AI71 that particular tail has a clean history and the two engines both engines right engine was a new engine put in March 2025 the left engine was last serviced in 2023 and due next maintenance check in 2025 December and both engine histories are clean. When I saw that I couldn't find anything with the team. Both the pilots are exceptional pilots and the captain Sabharwal has more than 11,400 hours of flying experience and the first officer Clive has more than 3,400 hours of flying experience. What I hear from our colleagues is they were excellent pilots and great professionals. So we can't jump to any conclusions and there are a lot of theories and you see them in YouTube, you see them in media channels, you see them on other channels and lot of experts. So all I would say is that unless we wait for the investigations to come through and I am told by all the experts that the black box and the recorders will definitely tell the story and so we just have to wait for that and before that it's very important not to jump into any conclusion.

See Navika as I said I am not an expert to be able to decipher this. All I know is the facts the records that I have seen I'm not to say this is ruled out that is ruled out about the Tata group and you said you would have a separate investigation we can't do any separate any preliminary no we can't do any separate investigation all the records will be with the DGCA and the DGCA has set up those commissions and they will do the investigation there is independent investigation possible. So no preliminary probe by Air India itself internal there is nothing we can do. We can only see our records.

I sat with the team discussed this and I didn't see any red flags nor did they highlight any red flags.

One now because the point I'm making is that what I am giving you the information is very specific to this tail number and these engines and this pilot and this incident and any safety related issues we take it very seriously. See there are two things in the airline. One is very core which is the safety and there are other things that you have to do and all I would say is that anything safety related the first thing after you to cover and there are many things you yourself you know there are many makeup issues that are there still there are some ifs don't work some seats don't function okay those are customer experience issues we are trying to sort them out they are different from safety issues anything that safety issues there is no way DGCA allow us to fly and with respect to this specific aircraft what I have seen is what I have told you but this is not to say anything more extra because we need to wait for the investigation.

See anything other than this particular aircraft we can talk about it separately but all I am giving you data is only with respect to this incident this aircraft these engines and these pilots.

In none of these 787 Dreamliner aircrafts, we have 33 of them. None of them are maintained by Technic predominantly. Most of them are maintained in India by AESL or SIA Engineering that is the engineering company AESL and SIA Engineering company in Singapore. So these are the guys who are maintaining these aircrafts. They have nothing to do with any Turkish company for the 787 fleet.

See practically speaking there has never been a safety concern raised because Dreamliners have been operating globally for a very long time from I think 2008 or 2009 or something like that and Air India also procured them much before we bought Air India. Yeah. So it has bought most of these I think when we bought Air India itself we had 27 Dreamliners and then we got additional six through Vistara. So Dreamliner specific complaint we have not received. So we have while we have ordered a large number in the new orders we have ordered we have made a lot of order on A350 but we have also got options to buy 787 but there has never been a specific concern on the 787 but all these videos are also surfacing and they are doing a lot of viewing at this point in time but you must be aware of the fact that this is not only something that is surfacing now. The United States, the FAA is investigating into some of these charges that have been made by former staff of Boeing.

See these are things that are being dealt with the investigation agencies in the US but overall 787s have been flying for a very long time and in Air India it has been flying 787 for a long time.

Let me give you a full breakdown. First, I would like to say that there are more than 1100 flights that we fly every day. And in the last 6 days there have been in general anywhere from 5 to 16 or 18 flights depending on the day that have been cancelled. Okay, first you need that number. Second, what has happened in this period of 6 days? There are three things at work. The first thing is we have had to go through the DGCA checks. The moment the accident happened on the 12th, DGCA has mandated additional checks to be done on all the 787s. So we have had to ground many 787s and as a result we are short of aircrafts and we had to cancel those flights. That is one cause. How many of those? 24 out of the 33 about 24 have gone through the checks and the remaining are going through and it is taking time but it will get through. The second reason is also this whole airspace has got closed Iran and the whole thing that is happening in Middle East. So as a result flights have to be diverted. When the flights are diverted many other flights gets cancelled and these two have a knock-on effect because if the flight doesn't arrive in time that flight cannot take off and when that cannot take off we have to cancel it because there is no aircraft. The third is technical issues and when we take off and land in any destination you must know that we'll be doing land checks and every now and then it is common for in the line checks to find some spare part to be changed or something to be changed not in every flight but it does happen. So because of that there may be delays. If the spare part is there immediately they change and immediately they take off. If the spare part is going to take time and even if it comes and then they fix it they may lose the slot of taking off. Yeah. Not taking off or arriving landing because they will close the airports at 10:00 some places etc. So these are the three things that have caused. It is not all our technical errors but I agree with you and Air India could have been very proactive in terms of everyday saying if they are cancelling why are they cancelling as opposed to a flight getting cancelled and in these six days because see normally if they had not communicated then it wouldn't create so much fear but because of what happened on the June 12th anytime there is something happens to a delay or a diversion or a cancellation even if I was traveling I will be afraid that is what has happened so we are doing a better job of communication we have not been good at it.

So we have set up a communication team on top of what we have in Air India, there is a regular comms team and we have put a strategic communication team in place in the last 3 days and today we have put out the first comprehensive media statement explaining all this what happened on the June 12th and subsequently why there has been so many cancellations when you say and give them this number these the total number of flights 700 flights we take this the cancellations and why these cancellations have happened and then we have taken an additional step because we are going to feel this kind of a disruption for some more time. Our checks will be there also the airspaces closure will be there. So we have decided to reduce the number of aircrafts which are flying so that we can have a lot of buffer aircrafts. You're doubling more than doubling the buffer aircrafts both in all the wide body and the narrow body 787s 320s and the triple 7s we're creating more buffer and that statement would have been issued by now.

So I did connect with both Boeing and GE at the highest levels and to be frank their top team from both the companies traveled and met with us. What I asked both of them in parallel to the DGCA checks that we have gone through, I asked them to check and tell us any issues are there in any of the aircraft or engines.

See as I said the numbers that you have said comprises multiple groupings. Some are very deliberate grounding of planes because we had to go through DGCA checks. Then a certain number had to go through or cancel primarily because of this airspace closure and diversions and disruptions due to that and the knock on effect. Then there is a third category. So since we have not explained all of this so every cancellation has been reported in the media and I don't blame the media I totally hold Air India and our team to account that we have to do a better job of communication since that was not done everything is reported as a technical snag but none of these technical snags are of the nature that aircraft cannot fly. It is some part missing, something missing so far. And this is not to say that something else I will not see in the future. So at this point in time this is the status there is you know so we have to give a very strong communication on a daily basis at least for the time being till such time the confidence is restored.