In the final seconds of a doomed flight, a decision made by the Air India pilot may have prevented an even larger tragedy. On June 12, Flight AI-171 lifted off from Ahmedabad airport, only to crash less than a minute later. The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner slammed into a medical college hostel, killing 270 people on board and on the ground. Only one passenger survived.
The heartbreaking toll includes Arjun Patoliya, a father of two young girls, who was traveling to Gujarat to fulfill his late wife’s last wish. Just two weeks earlier, Bharti Patoliya had died of cancer. Their daughters, aged four and eight, are now left orphaned.
Crash Site Choice Likely Averted Mass Casualties
While the scale of loss is already immense, some believe it could have been far worse. Reports and discussions on Reddit suggest that the pilots, Officer Clive Kunder and Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, with over 9,000 flight hours between them, may have made a final judgment call to avoid heavily populated zones.
The aircraft came down just 1.7 kilometers from the runway in a relatively less crowded area with medical student hostels near the BJ Medical College and the Civil Hospital, Ahmedabad. What stands out is that the Civil Hospital, housing over 3,000 patients, sits just 400 meters from the crash site. South of the crash location lies a dense residential pocket, while the nearby Asarva neighborhood houses more than 5,000 people as of 2020.
The pilot’s ability to steer the failing plane away from these areas has sparked discussion. A Reddit user noted the plane crashed in “a somewhat loosely populated area,” adding, “Just 400 metres north of the crash site is a civil hospital and south just adjacent to the airport wall is a high-density residential area.”
The cause of the crash remains under investigation. The aircraft’s black box, recovered on June 13, could offer critical answers. India’s Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu confirmed its retrieval and called it “an important step forward in the investigation,” as reported by the BBC.
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While the full story behind the crash is still unfolding, the evidence so far points to a final act of skill and presence of mind by the pilots that likely spared thousands from harm.
