New Delhi: Air India is awaiting the final report of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) and will learn if there is anything to learn from it, the airline’s CEO Campbell Wilson said on Wednesday.
“We obviously, as with everyone else, await the final report, and if there is anything to learn from it, we will,” Wilson said at his first public engagement in India post the Air India crash of June 12 that killed 260 people.
Calling the accident devastating for people, families and the staff involved, he said that the airline has been doing everything to support those affected in an effort to ease their journey forward.
“It was absolutely devastating for the people involved, for the families of those involved, and the staff. And since that time, we have really been doing absolutely everything we can to support those affected, both families and also those on the ground, also the first responders, and really do whatever we can to ease their journey forward,” Wilson said.
Referring to the AAIB’s interim report, he said that it indicated that there was nothing wrong with the aircraft, the engines and the operation of the airline.
Anything that happens in the industry, whether it is with Air India or others, is a cause for introspection, Wilson said.
“It is a cause for reviewing practices. As I said, the interim report indicated that there was nothing with aircraft, engines or practices that required changing… (we will) keep improving, keep getting better,” he said.
The interim report is a contentious one and the findings have been challenged before the Supreme Court. Pilots’ bodies have claimed that there has been an attempt to blame the crash on pilot error.
The report, released on July 12, had said the fuel supply to both engines of the plane was cut off within a gap of one second, causing confusion in the cockpit soon after take-off. In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why he cut off. The other pilot responded that he did not do so, the interim report claimed.
Civil aviation minister K Rammohan Naidu, on October 7, had said there is no manipulation or dirty business happening in the investigation into the Air India plane crash.
Air India has completed paying interim compensation to the crash victims and others and is working on the final compensation.
