AI 171 Crash: US aviation attorney says known software fault may be the reason behind Boeing 787 disaster

On 12 June, Air India flight AI 171 lifted off from Ahmedabad for London. It never got far. The Boeing 787 used every metre of the 3.5-kilometre runway before it finally clawed itself into the sky. Thirty seconds later, the pilots issued a mayday: “Mayday… no thrust, losing power, unable to lift.” Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and First Officer Clive Kunder had no time. By the time they spoke to Air Traffic Control, it was already too late.

What happened in the sky

The aircraft reached just 625 feet before it began to sink. It fell at nearly 500 feet per minute. When it hit the ground, it smashed into a student hostel. Only one passenger out of 242 survived. Former Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani was among the dead. Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, the sole survivor, described the aftermath as “unimaginable”.

Footage shows the 787 stayed on course. No sharp turns, no sign of birds or smoke. Just a clean, catastrophic loss of thrust from both engines. The landing gear stayed down. The wing slats stayed open to grab whatever lift they could. None of it mattered.

Rare, but not impossible

Mary Schiavo, a US aviation lawyer with Motley Rice, says dual engine failures are “extremely rare”. “When both engines fail, the cause is usually external,” she told Financial Express. She points to bird strikes, bad fuel, or weather ingestion — none fit this crash.

Schiavo thinks the problem could lie deep in the Boeing 787’s brains: the TCMA and FADEC. “If the TCMA senses it’s still on the ground, it throttles back the engines without pilot input,” she said. In other words, the computer may have told the plane it hadn’t taken off, even as it clawed into the sky.

A history of warnings

This isn’t guesswork. Schiavo points to two near-disasters: a 2025 United Airlines 787 from Nigeria to Washington that nose-dived because of a suspected computer fault, and a 2019 ANA flight where the TCMA failed outright. She says the data recorders from AI 171 will confirm if that’s what doomed the flight.

Another suspect: The human factor

Fuel switches are getting a hard look. According to Bloomberg and The Air Current, investigators think the pilots may have accidentally shut off fuel to both engines. John Cox, an ex-airline pilot, says, “If you move those switches from run to cutoff, those engines will stop running in literally seconds.” In a cockpit crowded with checklists and blinking lights, pilots sometimes make fatal mistakes under pressure. It’s happened before. A Delta pilot in the 80s cut the fuel by accident but had altitude to restart. AI 171 did not.

Too many what-ifs

So far, there’s no proof of sabotage. Schiavo says intelligence chatter shows no sign of that. The take-off video shows the moment the engines throttle back — right when they should be at full thrust. Ahmedabad Airport doesn’t even have arrestor beds to catch an overrun. No pilot would pull power on purpose just after take-off.

WSJ quoted aerospace safety consultant Anthony Brickhouse: “In commercial aviation, a dual-engine failure is extremely rare… in the one in a million range.” When it does happen, pilots rely on an emergency turbine to keep vital systems alive. AI 171’s Ram Air Turbine did deploy, proof that all other power was gone.

The AAIB report won’t end it

India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is expected to release its first report soon. It will offer the first official clues but no big conclusions. What we know is this: a fully fuelled Dreamliner lost power and fell out of the sky, killing almost everyone aboard and dozens more on the ground.

Authorities are now dissecting flight hours, pilot training, design quirks, and a million lines of code. Neither Boeing nor GE Aerospace has commented in detail. The US National Transportation Safety Board is helping but staying quiet.

One aircraft. Two dead engines. Three decades of lessons on what’s supposed to be impossible. AI 171 shows that when software, switches or humans fail in the air, there is often no second chance. In the coming months, the data recorders will speak. Until then, families wait. And so does an entire country that trusted that plane to fly.