India ramps up checks on Boeing 787s after fatal crash

India’s aviation regulator says urgent safety checks are being carried out on dozens of Boeing 787 jets in the wake of the Air India crash that killed all but one of the 242 people on board.

Air India, under the direction of the aviation regulator, has so far completed one-time inspections of nine of the Dreamliner jets in its fleet with 24 aircraft still to inspect, the carrier said in a post on X on Saturday.

The checks are being done as the 787 jets return to India, before being cleared for their next flights. “Some of these checks could lead to higher turnaround time and potential delays on certain long-haul routes,” Air India said.

India’s aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, said on Friday it had ordered maintenance checks on all of Air India’s Boeing 787-8 and 787-9 Dreamliners equipped with General Electric’s GEnx engines.

The inspections, to be carried out over two weeks, include fuel, cabin-air, engine-control and hydraulics systems after the Air India plane appeared to lose thrust as it took off.

The last communication from flight captain Sumeet Sabharwal to air traffic control was “Mayday…no thrust, losing power, unable to lift,” the UK’s Telegraph newspaper reported.

Investigators have been surveying the wreckage of Air India flight AI171 to determine what caused the aircraft to fail shortly after takeoff on Thursday and plunge into a densely populated residential area in the western city of Ahmedabad. The incident ranks as the worst disaster in civil aviation in more than a decade.

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The accident site was cordoned off Saturday after rescue operations ended and the probe intensified. Experts from the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau and Boeing, as well as several civil aviation authorities, have surveyed the location. One of the plane’s two black boxes — which hold key flight and voice data from the flight — has been found.