AAIB to investigate first fatal crash of Boeing 787

New Delhi: Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) will probe the Air India plane crash at the Ahmedabad Airport on Thursday, according to an official.

Air India’s Dreamliner Boeing 787 aircraft, involved in the crash, had 242 people on board, including 12 crew members.

AAIB Director General and Director of Investigation at the agency, among others, will be leaving for Ahmedabad, the official said.

Under the civil aviation ministry, AAIB is responsible for the classification of safety occurrences, involving aircraft operating in the Indian airspace into accidents and serious incidents.

It carries out detailed investigations into accidents and also suggests measures to improve safety.

“We are aware of initial reports and are working to gather more information,” Boeing said in a statement.

Boeing’s 787 Dreamliners took to the skies 14 years ago and the Ahmedabad plane crash on Thursday afternoon is the first incident of the best-selling wide-body aircraft suffering a fatal accident. The Boeing 787-8 aircraft — VT-ANB — was 11.5 years old and had flown for more than 41,000 hours, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

And the Boeing 787-8 that crashed on Thursday was among the 27 such legacy planes operated by Air India, which is also set to start the retrofit of these aircraft in the coming months.

Air India and IndiGo are the two Indian airlines operating the B787 planes.

Out of the 34 B787 in Air India’s fleet, 27 B787-8 are legacy aircraft. The first of the legacy B787-8 is slated to go for retrofit in July. The remaining seven B 787-9 joined the Air India fleet after the merger of Vistara with it last year.

Globally, the Ahmedabad crash is the first time that hull loss has happened for a Boeing 787 (B787) aircraft, according to an official.

Cirium said the aircraft operated its first flight on December 14, 2013.

The plane was delivered to Air India on January 28, 2014, and it was 11.5 years old.

“The aircraft had 18 business class seats and 238 economy class seats.

It had more than 41,000 hours of flying time, and almost 8,000 takeoffs and landings, including some 700 cycles in the past 12 months. This is average for that aircraft build year/period,” Cirium said.

Air India had 34 of the Boeing 787s in service at the time of the incident, including this aircraft.

The airline has an additional 20 787s on order and a letter of intent for options for an additional 24 aircraft, as per Cirium.

In total, Air India has 190 aircraft, with an average age of 8.4 years old, Cirium said.

There are 1,148 Boeing 787 variants in service globally, with an average age of 7.5 years old.

Recently, IndiGo started operating B787 leased from Norwegian carrier Norse Atlantic. IndiGo is to lease a total of 6 such planes for long haul operations.

The Dreamliners come in three models -- 787-8, 787-9 and 787-10.

The 787-8 has a range of up to 13,530 kilometres. The plane’s length is 57 metres, height is 17 metres and the wingspan is 60 metres, as per Boeing website.

A few years back, the US watchdog Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had stopped deliveries of the Dreamliners due to certain issues but the plane was never involved in any fatal crash till Thursday.

Despite being marketed as one of the safest and most advanced aircraft in the skies, the Dreamliner has been linked to several technical faults. In fact, the crash has put the spotlight on claims by a Boeing engineer last year, who said that the 787 Dreamliner suffers from assembly defects that threaten safety.