India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is set to miss the formal, internationally mandated one-year deadline to deliver its final report on the catastrophic Air India Flight AI-171 crash, deferring its definitive findings due to a complex, ongoing engine probe in the United States. The London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner tragically crashed into a medical college hostel complex shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025, killing 260 people and marking the world’s deadliest aviation disaster in a decade. Under International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) rules, a final accident report must be published within twelve months of an incident; however, given the intricate technical challenges of the probe, the AAIB will instead issue a comprehensive interim status update this week detailing its progress.
The core bottleneck stems from the exhaustive forensic examination of the aircraft’s twin GE Aerospace engines. The heavily damaged components were shipped to a specialized facility in Ohio because the highly sophisticated equipment required to properly dismantle, test, and analyze the engine management units is globally scarce. Finding a conclusive answer is critical, as a preliminary report published last July revealed that the Dreamliner’s fuel control switches moved almost simultaneously from “RUN” to “CUTOFF” moments after takeoff, instantly starving the engines of fuel. While early assessments of cockpit voice recordings led some international experts to explore pilot intervention, local pilot unions have vehemently challenged this theory, urging investigators to scrutinize potential technical failures, electrical malfunctions, or glitches in the jet’s core network system. With investigators also evaluating the deployment of the emergency Ram Air Turbine and recovering data from a severely damaged rear flight recorder, the final report is now expected to be delayed by at least three months until the U.S. engine analysis is fully resolved.