New Delhi: Five minutes after takeoff, the pilot of Air India Flight 171 issued a Mayday call, signaling a grave emergency moments before the crew crashed in Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025.
Air India Flight 171, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, departed from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad at 1:38 PM IST, en route to London Gatwick. With 242 passengers and crew aboard, the plane transmitted a Mayday call to air traffic control (ATC) seconds into the flight, signaling a state of emergency.
The aircraft, flying under Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, went off the radar after the distress call and subsequently fell near Meghaninagar, a residential colony two kilometers away from the airport. The crash was responded to by local authorities and resulted in more than 200 casualties, with former Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani among those killed at 1:43 PM.
A Mayday call is used as an international signal to communicate distress in aviation, where the aircraft and its occupants are in immediate danger of factors like engine failure, structural issues, or an impending crash. We repeat it three times to establish clarity and prioritize the aircraft in the emergency response queue.
Mayday comes from the French phrase m’aidez (help me) and was first introduced in the 1920s by Frederick Stanley Mockford, a radio officer at Croydon Airport, London. The adoption of Mayday as a universal distress signal occurred due to its pronounced and well-heard nature, even when received over a radio.
Speaking to NDTV, aviation expert Captain Saurabh Bhatnagar stated, “The takeoff was normal, but shortly before the gear was to be raised, the aircraft began to descend, which can occur only when the engine is not producing thrust or the aircraft is not generating lift.”
According to the DGCA, the Mayday call was made at 1:39 p.m. IST, and the aircraft did not respond to subsequent ATC calls, indicating that “things have deteriorated rapidly.”
The Mayday call from Flight 171 shows how dire and rapid the crisis that quickly spread was. The tragedy, meanwhile, underlines the importance of distress signals in aviation safety procedures as the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) investigates what caused it.