Three days after the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) cautioned against “spreading premature narratives” surrounding the June 12 Air India flight AI 171 crash in Ahmedabad, Union Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu rubbished Western media reports and accused them of having vested interests. Naidu’s remarks come after certain Western media outlets blamed the action by one of the pilots as the cause of the crash, which killed 260 people — 241 of the 242 people on board and 19 on the ground.
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Speaking to the media in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, Kinjarappu said, “AAIB has made an appeal to all, especially Western media houses, which may have a vested interest in the kind of articles they are trying to publish.”
Exuding confidence in the ongoing probe conducted by AAIB, Naidu said, “I believe in AAIB… They have done a wonderful job in decoding the black box in India itself… Making any comments until the final report comes out is not a good exercise… There is no point in jumping to conclusions at this point.”
#WATCH | Ghaziabad, UP | Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu says, “AAIB has made an appeal to all, especially Western media houses, which may have a vested interest in the kind of articles they are trying to publish. I believe in AAIB… They have done a wonderful… pic.twitter.com/24Ic9XTkiN
— ANI (@ANI) July 20, 2025
In an appeal issued on July 17, AAIB Director General GVG Yugandhar urged the public and the media to “refrain from spreading premature narratives” around the worst aviation disaster involving an Indian airline in four decades. He also termed it “irresponsible” that sections of the international news publications are “repeatedly attempting to draw conclusions through selective and unverified reporting”.
Stressing on the need to respect the sensitivity of loss faced by kin of the victims, Yugandhar noted that the preliminary report only attempts to merely provide information on what happened in the crash, and that it is too early to arrive at any definitive conclusions.
What did the preliminary investigation report find?
As per the preliminary investigation report released by AAIB, a month following the tragic incident, the Air India Boeing 787-8 aircraft crashed after both its engines were starved of fuel as the two fuel control switches transitioned from ‘RUN’ to ‘CUTOFF’ position within a second of each other moments after lift-off. The report also added that one of the pilots asked the other why he cut off the fuel, to which the other pilot responded saying he did not, according to the cockpit voice recorder data.
The report does not mention that the fuel control switches — which allow and cut fuel flow to the plane’s engines — moved physically, and uses the term “transitioned” to describe the change of mode from RUN to CUTOFF. It also does not state these were moved by either of the pilots. However, the selective information presented in the report had many believing that it implicitly pointed a finger at one of the pilots. A few experts and industry watchers had raised issues of scarce flow of official information, absence of regular updates, and briefings on the investigation.
