THE SUPREME COURT ON FRIDAY described as “unfortunate” the tragic crash of Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner Crash in June in June near Ahmedabad, claiming the lives of 260 people on board, and observed that the pilot could not be faulted for the incident.
A Bench comprising Chief Justice-designate, Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi remarked, “No one in India believes it was the pilot’s fault.”
The Court was hearing a petition filed by the father of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, the Pilot-in-Command of Air India’s London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner flight, seeking a fair and transparent probe into the crash under the supervision of a retired judge. The petitioner urged for a technically sound and independent investigation monitored by the Court.
Appearing for the petitioner, senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan told the bench that the ongoing inquiry by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (‘AAIB’) lacked independence and raised apprehensions that the pilot might be unfairly held responsible for the tragedy.
A Bench comprising Chief Justice-designate, Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi remarked, “No one in India believes it was the pilot’s fault.”
Justice Kant, expressing sympathy, told the petitioner’s father, “It’s extremely unfortunate that this crash took place, but you should not carry this burden that your son is being blamed… Nobody can blame him for anything.”
Justice Bagchi also pointed out that the AAIB’s preliminary report contained no adverse findings against the pilot. “One pilot asked whether the fuel was cut off by the other, and the other said no. There is no suggestion of fault in that report,” he observed.
When senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan mentioned that a Wall Street Journal article, citing unnamed Indian government sources, appeared to suggest pilot error, the Bench dismissed the report, saying it attached no credibility to such claims.
“That is nasty reporting. We are not concerned with foreign reports. No one in India believes it was the pilot’s fault,” the Bench asserted.
The Court has issued notices to the Union government, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (‘DGCA’), and other authorities on the petition and listed the matter for further hearing on November 10.
The father of late Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, pilot-in-command of the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner that crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad has approached the Supreme Court seeking a judicially monitored and independent probe into the causes of the accident.
What does the petition argue?
The petition by 91-year-old Pushkaraj Sabharwal, along with the Federation of Indian Pilots (‘FIP’), has sought the appointment of a committee headed by a retired Supreme Court judge and comprising independent aviation experts to conduct what it calls a fair, transparent, and technically sound inquiry.
The plea has strongly criticised the ongoing probe being carried out by the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the DGCA, alleging that both the process and the preliminary report dated June 15 are “defective, perfunctory and riddled with serious errors and inconsistencies.” It has urged the Court to treat the DGCA’s inquiry as closed and to transfer all materials, data, and evidence to the proposed independent panel.
“Respondents have conducted a perfunctory, biased, and technically deficient investigation into the crash of Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner (VT-ANB), ignoring critical inconsistencies, material evidence, and plausible systemic causes, thereby undermining the credibility of the inquiry,” the petition states.
The petitioners have alleged that the DGCA prematurely blamed the crash on pilot error, without any comprehensive analysis or corroborative evidence. Such an approach, the plea contends, is “arbitrary, perverse and violative of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.”
Describing the DGCA’s conclusion as “inherently implausible and contrary to flight data,” the petition has said that the RAT deployment occurred before any manual pilot input.
It has further asserted that the preliminary report suffers from grave technical shortcomings, particularly the failure to analyse crucial factors such as the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) deployment, the possible malfunction of Boeing’s Common Core System (CCS), and the simultaneous failure of multiple redundant safety and data systems — pointing instead to a likely systemic electrical collapse rather than human error.
Describing the DGCA’s conclusion as “inherently implausible and contrary to flight data,” the petition has said that the RAT deployment occurred before any manual pilot input, undermining the claim of pilot error. The investigators’ failure to correlate crew inputs with the RAT’s activation, it said, showed “non-application of mind and suppression of material facts.”
The petition also criticises the DGCA for ignoring warnings from aviation experts about design-level or software integration failures within Boeing’s CCS system. It adds, “The omission to carry out independent software forensic analysis or fault-injection testing has compromised the integrity of the findings and defeated the objective of an impartial technical inquiry envisaged under Annex 13 of the Chicago Convention.”