Causing one of the deadliest civil aviation emergencies in history, the Air India plane AI171 was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner. Carrying 242 passengers on board, it nose dived to disaster seconds after take off in Ahmedabad on June 12. A 2024 post from Tesla CEO Elon Musk criticising Boeing’s management resurfaced after the tragic incident.

“The CEO of an aircraft company should know how to design aircraft, not spreadsheets” he said in June 2024, merely a year ahead of the Air India plane crash. This followed a post from May 2024 which called out Boeing  when it “got $4.2 billion to develop an astronaut capsule and SpaceX only got $2.6 billion, SpaceX finished 4 years sooner. Note, the crew capsule design of Dragon 2 has almost nothing in common with Dragon 1. Too many non‑technical managers at Boeing.”

The post highlighted the then $4.2 billion investment Boeing made in the Starliner aircraft owned by Musk himself. It pointed out the fault in the aircraft company’s management with a rapidly changing leadership governed by profit-motivated individuals.

Shift4’s Jared Isaacman’s response was a stirring reaction to Musk’s post on X. He said that the problems began way ahead of the leadership change. “There is a duopoly for commercial aircraft between Boeing and Airbus. In the DoD, the government permitted excessive consolidation among the big primes to the point that companies like Boeing, Lockheed can’t fail.”

His reaction falls between the excessive consolidation in the aerospace and defense industries debate. As per Isaacman, it stifled innovation and created complacency among major players like Boeing and Lockheed. It calls for more disruptive challengers like SpaceX to restore competition and national competitiveness.

Boeing in India

As an aftermath of the fatal flight AI 171, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has directed all Boeing Dreamliner 787/9 fleet of Air India equipped with Genx engines to undergo additional maintenance and safety checks with immediate effect. The DGCA released a detailed circular with an updated SOP for Air India.

Air India Boeing tragedy

Claiming more than 240 lives, the AI 171 Ahmedabad plane was bound for London. However, it caught up in flames the moment after it crashed into a medical college hostel. Taking the lives of passengers, pilots, crew and many other on-ground lives, the traumatic incident will be a dark day in civil aviation.

Furthermore, days after the crash, nine Air India flights were cancelled in the past 48 hours. International flights from Delhi, Ahmedabad were cancelled to Paris and London respectively. A domestic IndiGo flight from Delhi to Kochi faced  a bomb threat and thus made an emergency diversion to Nagpur. The sudden disruption in air traffic led to a meeting between DGCA and Air India officials leading to the updated safety guidelines issued.