India Rejects UN Assistance in Ahmedabad Plane Crash Probe
New Delhi, 27th June 2025: India has declined an offer from the United Nations to include one of its investigators in the probe into the tragic Air India crash in Ahmedabad on June 12, which claimed 260 lives.
According to Reuters, citing government sources, India has decided not to permit the involvement of UN investigators. Some aviation safety experts had previously criticized delays in analyzing the black box data from the crash.
The United Nations aviation agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), had offered to deploy an investigator to assist Indian authorities following the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crash. ICAO has been invited to assist in other investigations in the past, including the 2014 disappearance of a Malaysian airliner and the 2020 downing of a Ukrainian jetliner — but both times, the assistance was formally requested by the respective countries.
In this case, ICAO reportedly proposed assigning an investigator as an observer, but Indian officials refused the offer.
Meanwhile, India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has not commented on the rejection of the UN offer. However, the Ministry of Civil Aviation stated on Thursday that investigators had successfully downloaded flight recorder data around two weeks after the accident.
Earlier, safety experts had raised questions about the transparency of the investigation, particularly regarding the condition of the cockpit voice recorder found on June 13 and the flight data recorder recovered on June 16.
Questions also emerged over whether the recorders would be analyzed within India or sent to the United States. A senior civil aviation ministry official, speaking anonymously, said that India is complying with all ICAO protocols.
Initial accident reports typically become available about 30 days after an incident, though conclusions often take much longer, as most air crashes involve multiple factors.
