The news of the crash of Air India flight AI 171 on Thursday, 12 June, 2025, scheduled from Ahmedabad, in India to London, is heartrending, to say the least. The accident invoked King David’s dirge in 2nd Samuel chapter one, verses 19 to 27, when David heard of the demise of King Saul and Jonathan. “How are the mighty fallen. ”
The airplane involved, Boeing 787 – Dreamliner, is the same type used by United Airlines on the Accra – Washington DC route.
First manufactured in 2011, the plane had a perfect safety record. It is steady and flies like a dream, indeed, a dreamliner. I was on the route, Accra – Washington, recently and hence my professional assessment.
So what went wrong? Investigations are underway and the cause of the crash would be found. Just as it is done for all air accidents. It is said that, air travel becomes safer after a plane accident.
In my article entitled – Need to expand air travel within Ghana, published by the Ghanaian Times, on July 27, August 11 and 14, 2023, I described air travel as the safest activity in which a person can engage.
In order words, quoting further from my article, the odds are very low, indeed, that you would die in a plane crash. I even had the confidence to predict that, the rate at which the aviation industry was improving on flight safety, air accidents may become, a thing of the past.
The aviation industry, further postulated that, flying has become, so safe that, we have run out of accidents to cover; so now it is animation of when accident didn’t happen. Just 5 air accidents out of a total of 32.2 million flights, in 2022, is mind boggling.
I, however, threw in a caveat, that so long as the act remained in the hands of humans with flesh and blood, air accidents would best be in the realm of incidents, a lower level of mishaps.
Until the cause of the Indian air crash is determined by air accident investigators, we can only speculate. The cause of the accident would be found and corrective solutions adopted to eradicate it’s repetition. Air travel still remains the safest means of transportation available to mankind. However the reaction of an aviation expect, in Ghana, to the news, cannot be ignored.
I visited Mr. E. N. Quao, a former Chief Engineer of Ghana Airways. Mr. Quao is above 90 years and the news of the India crash was kept from him. My okro mouth brought him into the knowledge of the crash.
Mr. Quao could not believe that a modern airliner would crash, a few seconds after takeoff. He first thought I was pulling his legs. When it finally dawn on him that I was serious, thanks to the intervention of Mr. Douglas Djarbeng, a lawyer.
Mr. Quao, in his disbelief, asked me many times, if the airplane involved was a commercial one. When he heard the fatalities of 290, still counting, including 241 on the plane and another 49 on the ground, the old man went into a deep thought. The wisdom of keeping the news of the accident from him dawn on me. The entire aviation world is in a state of deep thought.
Many years of redesigns and failsafe systems to prevent an accident reoccuring, all went up in flame on a clear afternoon at Ahmedabad. How are the mighty fallen and the vehicle of modernity, perished?
By Wg. Cdr. Kwaku Kekrebesi
Writer – Wg. Cdr. Kwaku Kekrebesi, formerly a Pilot in Ghana Armed Forces. kekrebesik@gmail.com
Editor’s note: Views expressed in this article do not represent that of The Chronicle
