One of the engines of the Air India plane that crashed last week was new, while the other was not due for servicing until December, the airline’s chairman has said.In an interview with an Indian news channel, N Chandrasekaran said that both engines of the aircraft had “clean” histories.”The right engine was a new engine put in March 2025. The left engine was last serviced in 2023 and due for its next maintenance check in December 2025,” he told Times Now channel. At least 270 people, most of them passengers, were killed last Thursday when AI171, a London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, crashed less than a minute after taking off from Ahmedabad airport in western India.Investigators are now sifting through debris and decoding recorded flight data and cockpit audio – from the aircraft’s black boxes which have been found – to deconstruct the flight’s final moments and determine the cause of the incident.”There are a lot of speculations and a lot of theories. But the fact that I know so far is this particular aircraft, this specific tail, AI171, has a clean history,” Mr Chandrasekaran said, cautioning people against jumping to conclusions.”I am told by all the experts that the black box and recorders will definitely tell the story. So, we just have to wait for that,” he added.Kishore Chinta, a former investigator with India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, told the BBC that the condition of an aircraft engine is not necessarily linked to its age – particularly in the case of the Genx-1B engines used on the Boeing 787-8.”The age of the engine has no bearing on the health of the engine, especially for the Genx-1B engines,” Mr Chinta said. In other words just because an engine is new, does not necessarily mean it is healthy, or vice versa. Unlike older models, the Genx-1B engines, which are made by GE Aerospace, don’t follow a fixed overhaul or maintenance schedule. Instead, they are equipped with a system called the Full Authority Digital Engine Control or FADEC that continuously monitors engine health and perfo …
