Air India plane crash: 'We have complete details from CVR,' says civil aviation minister

Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu told the Rajya Sabha on Monday that complete details from the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) of the Air India AI171 flight that crashed in Ahmedabad on June 12 this year are available. Naidu further said that the final report on the plane crash will include all the findings. 

The plane crash in Ahmedabad claimed the lives of 260 people, including passengers, crew, and people on the ground. 

"We have the complete details from the cockpit voice recorder. All the findings will be included in the final Air India crash probe report. The report will be based purely on facts, with no bias whatsoever," Naidu told the Upper House on the first day of the Monsoon session. 

Moreover, Naidu said that what exactly happened on the fateful day would come out only after the final probe report by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) — an independent body under the civil aviation ministry —  is out.

He further said that the AAIB follows a definitive, rule-based process and has remained totally unbiased in probing the crash. Naidu mentioned that the AAIB has successfully decoded the data from the black boxes of the AI 171 flight. 

He added that this was the first time ever that the government decided that the black box would be decoded in the country, as previously, the black box was sent for investigation abroad. 

Going ahead, the minister also called out media outlets over their coverage of the incident, while urging them to refrain from speculating until the final report is out. 

"AAIB is carrying out the investigation in a transparent manner...I have seen multiple articles not only by the Indian media but also by the Western media trying to promote their own narrative. The way we are seeing the investigation is through facts. We want to stand by the truth. And that will only be revealed when the investigation is complete," Naidu said.

At present, the incident is being jointly investigated by India's AAIB with support from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NSTB).