Civil Aviation Minister K. Rammohan Naidu has on Tuesday confirmed that the black box of the Air India plane that crashed in Ahmedabad last month is now under investigation by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), flatly rejecting rumors that the device will be taken outside the country for analysis.
Addressing Pune at the 2025 edition of the Helicopters & Small Aircraft Summit — a joint event by FICCI and the Ministry of Civil Aviation — Naidu pointed out that Indian agencies have the required technical expertise to crack the flight data recorder within the country.
"There is absolutely no need to send the black box to the United States or any other nation," Naidu said. "Our agencies are technically capable of extracting and analyzing the data. The investigation is ongoing, and an exhaustive report will be released once it is complete."
His comments followed earlier reports indicating the data could be decoded with assistance from foreign organizations such as the U.S.-based National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
Naidu emphasized that cracking the black box would be essential to grasping the chain of events that preceded the crash. "It will give crucial insights into what precisely happened in those last few minutes," he explained.
The tragic crash took place on June 12, when a London-bound Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed into a hostel building just minutes after it took off from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport. The crash claimed 270 lives, with 241 passengers and crew aboard. One passenger managed to survive the crash.
The black box of the aircraft was recovered on June 13 from the wreckage by investigators. This critical piece — which consists of two devices, the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) — records technical information and cockpit voices and helps investigators recreate the timeline of an aircraft accident.
Refuting additional media reports, Naidu again repeated, "The black box is here in India, and it is being analyzed by our very own AAIB. Any statements saying that it would be taken outside the country are baseless."
On being questioned about when data would be recovered, the minister replied, "It's a complicated, technical procedure. The AAIB is strictly going by due procedure, and we should let the investigation go on without any hindrance.
Meanwhile, local police confirmed that the aircraft’s wreckage remains in the custody of the AAIB as part of the ongoing probe.
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