"Need to pay attention to safety, security of aircraft": Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary on AI 171 crash

New Delhi [India], June 14 (ANI): Following the tragic plane crash of Air India flight 171 near Ahmedabad airport on Thursday, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary said that with privatisation of air travel, there is a need for better safety and security checks in aircraft. The Congress leader also demanded an unbiased judicial probe into the incident.
The Congress leader also said that the plane which crashed, a Boeing Dreamliner 787-8, has faced technical problems before.
"Today air travel is not just a luxury, but a necessity. People don't use it for fun, but for their work, which has increased the number of passengers too. That is why, with this, we should be paying more attention to the safety and security of aircraft. Dreamliner 787 was already having a technical snag, reportedly. It was also told that in 2024 itself, the technical snags will be fixed," the Congress leader told ANI here.
"On one hand, we are privatising air travel and thus we need to pay more attention to the safety. Now, experts will come from America, Europe, the Black Box will be opened, everything will happen. But I want to say that before the incident even happened, if we had been even more careful then could we have prevented this? We need to find that out," Chowdhary said.
"There should be an unbiased judicial probe in this matter, and this is my demand to the government," he added.
Following the crash, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has ordered enhanced safety inspections on Air India's Boeing 787-8/9 fleet.
As a preventive measure, the DGCA has directed Air India to carry out additional maintenance actions on B787-8/9 aircraft equipped with Genx engines with immediate effect, in coordination with the concerned regional DGCA offices.
On Thursday, the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, operating as flight AI 171, was en route to London from Ahmedabad when it crashed shortly after takeoff. There were 242 people on board, including 230 passengers and 12 crew members.
There was only one survivor from the crash, identified as Vishwashkumar Ramesh, a British national of Indian origin who sustained injuries and is undergoing treatment.
The AAIB has launched a full-scale investigation into the crash, with over 40 staff from the Gujarat State Government joining efforts to support the Ministry of Civil Aviation teams on the ground. (ANI)