AvTalk Episode 325: The crash of Air India flight 171

AvTalk - Aviation Podcast

Flightradar24

Places & Travel, Society & Culture, Business News, News, Leisure, Aviation

4.8 • 911 Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this week’s episode of AvTalk, we discuss the crash of Air India flight 171 shortly after take off from Ahmedabad last week. What we know, what we don’t know, and possible avenues of investigation. We also examine the situation in the Middle East to see what effects current hostilities between Iran and Israel are having on commercial aviation. And we dig into the order numbers from this week’s Paris Air Show.
Helpful links for this week’s episode

* Flightradar24 data regarding Air India 171
* Airspace closures in the Middle East
* Paris Air Show news round up

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Please click here for a transcript of this week’s episode.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to episode 325 of AvTalk.
0:11.9	I am Ian Petchnik, here as always with.
0:15.7	Jason Urbanowitz.
0:16.7	Hello, Ian.
0:17.7	How are you?
0:18.9	Hello, Jason.
0:39.7	Yeah, the show notes just say, begin with long sigh. And I think you hit the nail on the head there with that sigh. These are not episodes we like doing. You all knew it was coming. We have to talk about it. But the news has had almost a week now to sink in, and none of it is particularly good. But where do we even start with Air India?
0:44.2	Well, I mean, as always, let's start with the facts.
0:48.9	On the afternoon of June 12th, Air India Flight 171, from Abdubad to London Gatwick crashed shortly after
0:59.0	takeoff. This is the first fatal crash of a Boeing 787. It is the first 787 total hull loss.
1:10.6	And there are any number of questions at this moment that will need to be answered eventually
1:18.9	by a full investigation that is currently underway.
1:25.2	241 of the 242 people on board perished in the crash. There was one survivor, a man that was seated in seat 11A next to the L2 exit door. He is the lone survivor from the airplane. And at this point, there is still an as yet
1:46.4	unknown number of casualties on the ground as the aircraft impacted a medical school dormitory.
1:54.2	This was a flight that operated daily to London. And everything we know so far is based on what limited
2:06.7	ADSP data we have. There are a few reports that have come out today, published in the Wall
2:12.6	Street Journal about some of the things that we may have seen in the video that was taken
2:17.3	of the departure roll, of the liftoff, and of the things that we may have seen in the video that was taken of the departure
2:18.4	roll, of the liftoff, and of the crash. So, Jason, let's talk about what the ADSB tells us
2:27.2	limited as it is. Not a whole lot, but enough to know. It went wrong real quick. Very quickly indeed. So a few things to address
2:37.7	with the ADSB data here. Our ground coverage, Flight Radio 24 ground coverage at Ahmedabad is limited
2:45.2	in the northeastern section of the airfield. So the terminal complex, the runway is a northeast,
	...

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