Air India has worked to boost its safety record after a cluster of dangerous incidents about 15 years ago.
The carrier’s previous fatal accident, before the one on Thursday, was in August 2020. An Air India Express flight from Dubai overshot the runway in Kozhikode, killing both pilots and 19 passengers.
Air India, which was founded in 1932, was owned by the Indian government from 1953 until 2022. After spending years trying to sell it, the government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, found a buyer in the Tata Group. It was also the original owner of Air India.
Tata’s chairman, N. Chandrasekaran, said in a statement: “Our thoughts and deepest condolences are with the families and loved ones of all those affected by this devastating event.” Air India removed the colours from its website, leaving a grey and sombre statement of sorrow.
Tata has absorbed other, smaller airlines into the Air India brand, while struggling to modernise many of its operations. Along with IndiGo, Air India now forms a near duopoly within India’s growing domestic aviation market. Air India and IndiGo together fly 91 per cent of all passengers within India. Air India has struggled to buy enough planes and hire enough pilots for its ambitions to expand service.
Many of Tata’s companies trade on the stock market, but the one that owns Air India is private. Shares in Tata companies, including Tata Motors and the Tata Consultancy Services, lost about 3 per cent of their value on Thursday as news of the crash was reported. Shares of IndiGo also declined.
Before the incident at Kozhikode in 2020, a decade had passed without a deadly Air India incident. In 2010, an Air India Express plane had skidded off a hill at the end of a short runway in Mangalore, in the western state of Karnataka. It burst into flames, killing more than 150 people.
At the time, many were worrying about the safety of India’s aviation sector — there were three near-misses at the Mumbai airport in 2009 — as well as concerns about Air India’s professionalism.
A plane had flown without a pilot at the controls for several minutes during a scuffle between pilots and flight attendants. Another Air India plane was delayed 11 hours by a plane-wide search for rats.
In a video statement on Thursday after the crash, Air India’s chief executive Campbell Wilson said that “our teams are working around the clock to support passengers, crew and their families as well as investigators however we can”.