Air India plane crash: 'Too many non-technical managers at Boeing,' Elon Musk once warned—his post resurfaces
Synopsis
An Air India Boeing 787-8 crashed after takeoff from Ahmedabad, killing 241 of 242 onboard and causing ground fatalities. A resurfaced Elon Musk tweet criticizing Boeing's management is drawing attention.
Tragedy struck on June 12 when an Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, bound for London, crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad airport. The aircraft was carrying 242 people, of whom only one survived. The crash also caused dozens of fatalities on the ground as the aircraft clipped buildings in a densely populated area.
Elon Musk's old tweet slams Boeing management
In the aftermath of the accident, an old tweet by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has resurfaced, igniting fresh scrutiny of Boeing's management culture. In the post, Musk compared the $4.2 billion NASA awarded Boeing to develop the Starliner spacecraft to the $2.6 billion SpaceX received for its Dragon 2 capsule. He noted that SpaceX completed the project four years earlier, despite a complete redesign.
"Too many non-technical managers at Boeing," Musk wrote, implying that bureaucratic inefficiencies and misaligned leadership may have hampered Boeing's performance—concerns echoed in a 2023 NASA audit on the commercial crew program.
DGCA orders urgent safety inspections on Dreamliner fleet
India's civil aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), has mandated enhanced safety inspections across Air India's Boeing 787-8 and 787-9 fleet following the crash. These aircraft are powered by Genx engines and will now be subjected to stringent checks with immediate effect.
Key directives include:
- A one-time pre-departure check starting June 15, including tests on engine fuel systems, electronic engine control, cabin air systems, and hydraulic mechanisms.
- Mandatory 'Flight Control Inspections' during transit until further notice.
- Power assurance tests within two weeks.
- Immediate closure of repeated maintenance issues logged in the last 15 days.
- All inspection reports are to be submitted to DGCA regional offices on priority.
Black box recovered from crash site
Investigators have made a significant breakthrough by recovering one of the aircraft's two Black Boxes—the flight data recorder (FDR)—from the rooftop of a medical college hostel struck by the aircraft. The recovery, made within 28 hours, is expected to shed light on why Flight AI-171 issued a distress Mayday call and crashed just 11 seconds after becoming airborne.
