Aviation enthusiasts and nervous flyers often search for the "Air India crash 787," but there’s a massive piece of context usually missing from that search query. If you're looking for a smoking crater and a hull loss involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner operated by Air India, you won't find one. It never happened. Thankfully, the Air India 787 fleet has never suffered a fatal crash or a total hull loss.
But aviation safety isn't just about the crashes that happen. It’s about the terrifyingly close calls that almost do.
When people talk about an Air India crash 787, they are almost always referring to one of two things: a series of high-profile technical scares that plagued the Dreamliner's early years, or a specific, heart-stopping "near-controlled flight into terrain" incident that occurred over Russia in 2018. That flight, AI101 from Delhi to New York, is the closest the world ever came to seeing a 787 disaster under the Air India banner.
It was a cold September morning. The pilots were fighting a "technical triple threat" that would have tested any crew's sanity.
The Flight AI101 Incident: 11 Minutes of Chaos
The reality of aviation is that things go wrong in layers. Rarely is it just one light on the dashboard. On September 11, 2018, the crew of Air India Flight 101 was approaching New York's JFK airport when they realized their 787-8 was basically "flying blind" regarding its landing aids.
Basically, the Instrument Landing System (ILS) wasn't working. Then the weather turned.
Low clouds. Pouring rain. A "go-around" was initiated, which is standard, but then things got weirdly intense. The pilots reported that they were low on fuel—not because of a leak, but because they had been in the air for 15 hours and the multiple landing attempts were eating into their reserves.
"We have a major technical failure," the pilot told the tower. They weren't kidding. They were dealing with a failed radio altimeter, a broken TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System), and an ILS that refused to lock on. Imagine trying to park a car in a pitch-black garage while your backup camera is broken and your headlights are flickering. Now do that at 160 knots with 370 people behind you.
They eventually diverted to Newark. They landed safely. But the investigation revealed just how close they were to a genuine Air India crash 787 headline. The "unstable approach" was a wake-up call for the airline's training protocols.
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Why People Think the Dreamliner is "Crash-Prone"
You’ve probably heard the stories about the batteries. Honestly, the 787 had a rough birth. Back in 2013, the entire global fleet of Dreamliners was grounded because the lithium-ion batteries kept catching fire. It was a PR nightmare for Boeing and a logistical headache for Air India, which had bet big on the jet to save on fuel costs.
Air India was one of the first airlines to experience these glitches. One of their planes had a "heat event" (the industry term for "it started smoking") while on the ground.
- Batteries overheated.
- Software glitches led to "blank screens" in the cockpit.
- Engine issues with the GEnx powerplants.
Because these incidents were so widely televised, the public memory has sort of morphed "scary technical failure" into "crash." It’s a common psychological phenomenon in travel. We remember the fear more than the resolution.
The 2023 "Technical Snag" Narrative
More recently, in June 2023, an Air India 787 flying from Delhi to San Francisco had to make an emergency landing in Magadan, Russia. This made international waves because, well, the US and Russia weren't exactly on speaking terms.
The plane had an oil pressure issue in one of its engines.
The passengers were stranded in a remote Russian town for two days. They slept on floors in schools. While it wasn't a crash, the optics were disastrous. It reinforced the idea that the Air India 787 fleet was "troubled." In reality, engine diversions happen to every airline, but when it’s a 787 and it involves Air India, the scrutiny is ten times higher.
Safety is a game of margins.
Air India’s maintenance record has been criticized in the past. Under the old government ownership, spare parts were sometimes scarce. "Cannibalization"—taking a part from one plane to fix another—wasn't unheard of. This led to a lot of "deferred maintenance" items that, while technically legal to fly with, increased the workload on pilots.
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The Tata Group Takeover: A New Safety Era?
Since the Tata Group took over Air India, there has been a massive push to scrub the "unreliable" label off their 787 operations. They’ve poured billions into new aircraft orders and, more importantly, into a massive new training facility.
The goal? To ensure that an Air India crash 787 remains a hypothetical "what if" rather than a tragic reality.
Experts like Captain Amit Singh, a prominent air safety advocate in India, have frequently pointed out that while the planes are modern, the "safety culture" needs to be equally modern. You can't fly a 21st-century spaceship like the Dreamliner with a 1970s bureaucratic mindset.
The 787 is a "fly-by-wire" marvel. It’s designed to be the safest thing in the sky. It has layers of redundancy that previous generations of jets simply didn't have. For instance, if one system fails, three others are usually waiting to take over. But as we saw with the JFK incident, if the pilots aren't perfectly synced with those systems, things get hairy fast.
Is the Air India 787 Safe to Fly?
Honestly, yes.
The 787 has one of the best safety records of any wide-body aircraft in history. Across all airlines, the hull loss rate is incredibly low. For Air India, despite the "scares," they have successfully operated thousands of Dreamliner flights across the Atlantic and Pacific without a single fatality.
If you're looking at a flight and see "Boeing 787-8" as the aircraft type, you're looking at a plane that can literally land itself in zero visibility—provided the crew and the ground equipment are talking to each other.
The Real Risks Nobody Talks About
We worry about engines falling off or wings snapping. Those aren't the real risks. The real risk is "Pilot Fatigue" and "Automation Dependency."
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On long-haul routes like Delhi to London or Mumbai to Singapore, the 787's cabin pressure (which is lower than older planes, making you feel less jet-lagged) is a godsend. But the flights are long. If a crew is dealing with multiple "minor" technical snags—like a broken coffee maker and a glitchy weather radar—the mental load adds up.
Most "crashes" that almost happened were the result of tired humans making small mistakes that snowballed.
Actionable Steps for Nervous Travelers
If you are worried about your next flight on an Air India 787, or any 787 for that matter, there are a few things you can do to feel more in control of the situation.
First, check the tail number. You can use sites like FlightRadar24 to see the recent history of the specific plane you’re boarding. Has it been delayed for "technical reasons" three times this week? Maybe that’s a sign of a maintenance backlog.
Second, understand the "Go-Around." If your pilot suddenly throttles up and climbs away from the runway right before landing, don't panic. That is the system working. It means the pilot decided the landing wasn't perfect and chose to try again. A go-around is a sign of a safe pilot, not a dangerous one.
Third, pay attention to the safety briefing. I know, everyone ignores it. But on the 787, the exits and the way the oxygen masks deploy (from the seatback in some configurations, or the ceiling in others) can vary slightly from the older A320s or 777s you might be used to.
Ultimately, the Air India crash 787 narrative is one of "near misses" and "lessons learned." The airline is in a state of massive transition. The "New Air India" is desperate to leave the reliability issues of the 2010s behind. For now, the Dreamliner remains the backbone of their international fleet, a sophisticated machine that requires equally sophisticated handling.
Avoid the sensationalist YouTube videos showing "Air India 787 Crash" thumbnails. Most of those are just Flight Simulator clips meant to farm clicks. Stick to the NTSB or the DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) reports if you want the cold, hard truth about flight safety. They aren't as exciting as a disaster movie, but they’re a lot more accurate.
To stay informed on current aviation safety, you should regularly monitor the DGCA's monthly safety audits. These reports highlight which airlines are being fined for maintenance lapses, providing a much clearer picture of safety than any single news headline ever could. It's also worth following the "Aviation Safety Network" database, which tracks every minor "incident"—from bird strikes to smoke in the cabin—giving you a statistical view of how a specific aircraft type is performing globally. Knowledge is the best cure for flight anxiety.