Live Updates: Over 260 Dead After Air India Crash, Official Says, With One Survivor

New York Times

21 hours ago

Boeing suffered another setback on Thursday, when a crash of one of its passenger jets in western India renewed scrutiny of the company's safety record following a yearslong quality crisis.
It could take months or years to determine the cause of the crash, in which an Air India passenger plane, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner carrying 242 passengers and crew members, slammed into a medical college in Ahmedabad, in the Indian state of Gujarat.
Manufacturing issues may ultimately have little to do with what went wrong, but the episode — the first fatal crash involving a Dreamliner — could still lead to more scrutiny into concerns about Boeing's production practices that go back years.
'Our deepest condolences go out to the loved ones of the passengers and crew on board Air India Flight 171, as well as everyone affected in Ahmedabad,' Kelly Ortberg, Boeing's chief executive, said in a statement.
Mr. Ortberg also said that he had spoken with N. Chandrasekaran, the chairman of Tata Group, the conglomerate that owns Air India, and offered Boeing's support. The company said it had a team ready to help with the investigation, which is being led by India's aviation regulators.
Plane crashes are typically caused by multiple factors that can include things like bird strikes, pilot error, manufacturing defects and inadequate maintenance. Early hypotheses are often ruled out during lengthy, technical crash investigations.
The first Dreamliner was delivered in 2011 to All Nippon Airways, Japan's largest airline. There are more than 1,100 in service today, including nearly three dozen operated by Air India, according to Cirium, an aviation data firm.
The plane involved in the crash on Thursday was delivered to Air India in January 2014 and had accumulated more than 41,000 flight hours, according to Cirium. The plane had taken off or landed nearly 8,000 times over its life, a typical amount for a Dreamliner of that age.
Thursday's crash comes as Boeing is still dealing with repercussions from two deadly accidents involving its 737 Max plane in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. The company reached a deal with the Justice Department last month, which would spare Boeing from taking criminal responsibility for the crashes.
Boeing has agreed to admit to obstructing federal oversight, pay a fine, contribute to a fund for the families of the victims and invest in safety and quality programs. The agreement, which requires the approval of a judge, was opposed by some of the families of crash victims.
The airplane manufacturer has faced other prominent safety issues in recent years.
In January 2024, a hole blew open on a new 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight, exposing passengers to forceful winds. Boeing told regulators last August that it would redesign the panels to better detect any malfunctions.
That episode prompted widespread reforms at the company. Among them was an overhaul of senior management, including its chief executive, substantial changes in quality processes and procedures, increased regulatory scrutiny and Boeing's purchase of a major supplier of Max bodies.
The Dreamliner has been the subject of quality concerns, too. Deliveries of the plane were paused for more than a year until the summer of 2022, when the Federal Aviation Administration approved a Boeing plan to make some fixes that included filling paper-thin gaps in the plane's body and replacing certain titanium parts that were made with the wrong material. Those problems had no immediate impact on the safety of Dreamliners, Boeing said at the time.
Last year, the F.A.A. investigated claims by a Boeing engineer who claimed that the company had taken shortcuts around the time of the delivery pause in fitting together parts of the Dreamliner fuselage, or body. The whistle-blower, Sam Salehpour, said that the improper procedures could cause premature damage over years of use.
Boeing disputed the claim, including at a briefing last year for reporters at the factory in North Charleston, S.C., where the Dreamliner has been assembled for years. Two top Boeing engineers said then that the company had found no evidence to support the whistle-blower's concerns after conducting exhaustive tests, inspections and analyses of the plane during its development and in recent years.
One 787 airframe had been subjected to testing that put it through 165,000 'flight cycles,' the equivalent pressurization and depressurization of that many flights. That figure far exceeded the plane's expected useful life and the airframe still showed no signs of fatigue, Steve Chisholm, a vice president and the functional chief engineer for mechanical and structural engineering at Boeing, said at the briefing in South Carolina.
Boeing also said then that nearly 700 Dreamliners had gone through thorough six-year maintenance checks, and eight had gone through 12-year checks. Mechanics found no signs of premature fatigue in those jets, either, according to the company.
Other whistle-blowers have raised concerns about the South Carolina factory where the Dreamliner has been assembled for years. Among them was John Barnett, a former quality manager with almost three decades of experience at Boeing, who went public with his concerns about shoddy practices in 2019.
Mr. Barnett killed himself last year after a yearslong legal battle with the company, which he accused of retaliating against him for raising his concerns. Last month, Boeing settled a lawsuit with Mr. Barnett's family concerning his death.
But the Dreamliner involved in Thursday's crash predated those concerns: It was built years earlier in Seattle and delivered to Air India in 2014, according to Cirium.
Mr. Ortberg, who took over as Boeing's chief executive last summer, described 2025 as 'our turnaround year' in a message to employees in April, when the company released better-than-expected quarterly financial results. At the time, the company said it had stabilized Dreamliner production at five planes per month, but planned to increase that to seven later in the year.
The company's shares were down about 5 percent in midafternoon trading Thursday.
Air India, one of the country's biggest carriers, had a cluster of dangerous incidents about 15 years ago. Before Thursday's crash, the airline's last fatal crash was in August 2020. The airline, which was taken over by the Tata Group in 2022 after decades of government ownership, has been working in recent years to improve its safety record and upgrade and expand its plane fleet.
Alex Travelli and Pragati K.B. contributed reporting.