Air India’s chairman N Chandrasekaran yesterday told staff that last week’s plane crash that killed at least 271 people should be a catalyst to build a safer airline, urging employees to stay resolute amid any criticism.
In a town hall held at the headquarters of the Tata Group-owned airline near New Delhi and attended by 700 staff, Chandrasekaran said the crash was the “most heartbreaking” crisis of his career, a spokesperson told Reuters.
“I’ve seen a reasonable number of crises in my career, but this is the most heartbreaking one,” he said, according to a Tata Group spokesperson.
“We need to use this incident as an act of force to build a safer airline,” Chandrasekaran told the meeting.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner with 242 people on board bound for Gatwick Airport south of London began losing height seconds after take-off in Ahmedabad on Thursday, and erupted in a huge fireball as it hit buildings below.
The airline and the Indian government are looking at several aspects of the crash, including the plane’s engine thrust, flaps, and why the landing gear remained open as the plane took off and then came down.
“We need to wait for the investigation ... It’s a complex machine, so a lot of redundancies, checks and balances, certifications, which have been perfected over years and years. Yet this happens, so we will figure out why it happens after the investigation,” Chandrasekaran, 62, said during the staff meeting.
The head of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Stephanie Pope, met Chandrasekaran yesterday at the airline’s headquarters in Gurugram, near New Delhi airport, and was accompanied by Boeing’s India president Salil Gupte, sources said.
Pope oversees design, production and delivery of advanced jetliners to Boeing customers around the world.
&uuid=(email))