Deceased pilot of Air India plane crash not being blamed in report: Centre tells Supreme Court

New Delhi: The Centre on Thursday submitted before the Supreme Court that the Air India pilot has not been blamed in the AAIB’s preliminary report into the June 12 plane crash, which claimed 260 lives.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta submitted before a bench of Justices Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi, that he understood the feeling of the father of the pilot and there was no blame attributed to anyone.

“As a matter of fact, after the interim report, which is mandatory within one month as per international standard, since there was some misconception, the Ministry of Civil Aviation issued a press note, and there is no blame attributable to anyone,” he said.

The court was hearing a plea by Pushkar Raj Sabharwal, the father of Commander Sumeet Sabharwal, one of the pilots of the ill-fated flight, seeking judicially monitored committee, headed by a former judge of the apex court, to conduct a probe into the crash.

Mehta submitted that the Aircraft Accident Investigation Board (AAIB) team to investigate the plane crash was formed under the international regime and there is a statutory provision for it.

“The AAIB inquiry is not meant to apportion blame on anyone. It is only to clarify the cause and then give recommendations so that the same does not happen again,” the bench noted.

Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, representing Sabharwal, submitted that the regime Mehta mentioned has not been followed and that was the problem. Mehta said any interference by anyone might be counterproductive to a good, valid, and really focussed investigation, which is going on.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, for an NGO, said it is very alarming that there have been thereafter several system failures in the Boeing 787 airplanes and everybody flying these aircrafts is at risk. “The pilots association has said that these aircrafts need to be grounded immediately. The association of all the pilots have said that," he claimed.

The bench said that it should not look like a fight between airlines.

Bhushan insisted there are several accidents which have happened due to system failures and a parallel inquiry should be done like a court of inquiry into an accident of such major scale.

The bench asked Mehta to file a response to the plea filed by the father of the deceased and fixed the matter for further hearing after two weeks.

On June 12, Air India's Boeing 787-8 aircraft operating flight AI171 en route to London's Gatwick airport crashed into a medical hostel complex shortly after taking off from Ahmedabad, killing 265 people, including 241 passengers and crew on board. Among the 241 dead were 169 Indians, 52 Britons, seven Portuguese nationals, one Canadian and 12 crew members. The lone survivor of the crash was Vishwashkumar Ramesh, a British national.