Air India has decided that it does not operate flight number AI 171 and will replace it with flight number AI 159. Officials familiar with the issue said the day after that number of flights crashed seconds after killing 241 people from Ahmedabad airport.
“Flights from Ahmedabad to Gatwick” [London] AI 159 will be renumbered. Return flights will also be changed to AI160,” the official said, requesting anonymity.
“The change will start to be reflected soon,” the official said.
Air India officials could not be reached for comment.
On Thursday afternoon, the London Bound Flight came in second after taking off with 242 people, including a 12-man crew. The government has yet to release official figures for the victims, but Amit Shah's Home Minister, who visited the site of the crash, confirmed that only one of the 242 people on board had survived. More people were killed when the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plunged into a medical school hostel.
“The idea behind changing the number of flights is to avoid causing trauma or bad memories,” said a former airline official. “It's also a way to dissociate the route from the tragedy in the minds of passengers and travelers,” the person said.
The last time the airline changed flights was when Malaysia Airlines plane on the Kuala Lumpur Beijing route, which operates as the MH370, was changed to the MH318 in 2014. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is an international passenger flight that disappeared from the radar on March 8, 2014, and is currently flying from Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur International Airport to China's Beijing Capital International Airport.
Lion Air also renumbered the flight from JT610 to JT618 to renumber after the flight, carrying 181 passengers and eight crew members, crashing into the Java Sea 13 minutes after takeoff on October 29, 2018, killing all 189 crew members on board.
Meanwhile, experts continued to piece together the reasons for Thursday's crash.
The Boeing 787 is one of the safest fleets to operate, the former pilot said. “Accidents like this are extremely rare. It's difficult to understand the cause of an accident by examining the visuals in the public domain,” the former pilot said, calling for anonymity.
The aircraft carried almost full load of 125,000 liters of fuel on Thursday. It slowly descended shortly after taking off at 1:38pm, and the landing gear still magnified before exploding the impact. According to data from the Flightradar24, the twin-engine plane reached an altitude of 625 feet (190.5 meters) at a speed of 174 knots.
“The Indigo Flights that were in line have halted takeoff after the pilot suspected the issue of Air India taking off,” an official said, on the condition of anonymity.
“The pilot reportedly heard some extraordinary noises while taking off before he noticed the fire,” an official at Ahmedabad airport said he would request anonymity.
An Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) official who requested anonymity said, “Yesterday was about rescue operations. Today we started collecting material evidence.” However, he did not confirm whether the Black Box had recovered.
Investigators avoided panic and requested that the investigation reveal the facts. “However, many theories have been made, but the initial cause of the series of events and crashes is clear and only becomes clear after the evidence is analyzed,” he concluded.
