The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) lab in New Delhi is now analyzing black box data from Air India Flight AI-171. The flight crashed in Ahmedabad earlier this month.
The Ministry of Civil Aviation said that the front black box’s Crash Protection Module was recovered safely. On 25th June, 2025, experts at the AAIB lab unlocked the memory module and downloaded the data. To confirm accuracy, they used a matching black box called a “golden chassis.” One black box was found on a building’s rooftop on June 13. The second was pulled from the crash debris on June 16.
The investigation is led by the AAIB and involves technical experts from the Indian Air Force, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), & the U.S.-based National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The NTSB is involved because the plane was made in the U.S. The head of AAIB is managing the entire process. The team also includes an aviation medicine expert and an Air Traffic Control officer.
NTSB officials are already in Delhi and working closely with Indian investigators at the AAIB lab. Engineers from Boeing and GE are in the city too, offering technical help.
India is following global standards under ICAO rules. This includes the 1944 Chicago Convention and the Aircraft (Investigation of Accidents and Incidents) Rules of 2017. The probe is happening in a transparent and time-limited way, aligned with international norms.
Before this, India used to send black boxes to foreign labs. These included the UK, USA, France, Russia, Canada, and Italy. Indian labs didn’t have the tools needed to decode critical data from serious crashes. That’s no longer the case. The Delhi AAIB lab is now ready to decode Cockpit Voice Recorders (CVR) and Flight Data Recorders (FDR) on its own.
AAIB was created in 2012 but stayed under-equipped until 2017. Things changed after the government’s Aatmanirbhar Bharat program, which promoted home-grown tech. Since then, AAIB has received better tools. This is the first time India is decoding black boxes of a major crash at home. In past crashes, decoding happened abroad—like in Moscow, the UK, the US, and Canada. That caused delays and raised concerns. But now, the Air India Flight AI-171 crash is being investigated entirely in India. Officials say this shift will make investigations faster & more reliable, helping the people trust India’s aviation system more.