The preliminary investigation report released by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau regarding the harrowing mid-air upset on Air India flight AI-2379 from Phuket to Delhi has brought extraordinary revelations to light, while simultaneously confronting global aviation experts with profound operational mysteries. The incident, which occurred aboard an Airbus A320neo carrying one hundred and forty-five passengers and crew, was initially attributed by early accounts to severe clear-air turbulence over eastern India. However, the initial findings from flight data recorders have completely upended that narrative, confirming that the modern passenger jet suffered a near-simultaneous pressure loss across all three independent hydraulic circuits within a four-second span. While the report confirmed the immediate trigger behind the abrupt altitude excursion that left twenty-four occupants injured, it has left three pivotal questions unanswered, sparking intense scrutiny among airline regulators, aerospace engineers, and commercial pilots worldwide.
The first and most perplexing question centers on how an advanced fly-by-wire jetliner could experience a simultaneous failure across all three hydraulic circuits—the green, blue, and yellow networks—and then spontaneously recover without direct mechanical intervention. In the architectural philosophy of commercial jetliners, particularly the Airbus family, triple redundancy is engineered specifically so that no single mechanical glitch, pump failure, or localized fluid leak can ever disable primary flight controls. Aviation safety specialists describe the simultaneous collapse of all three independent circuits as close to unthinkable under normal operating conditions. More baffling still is the telemetry showing that within seven seconds of the collapse, the blue circuit re-established pressure on its own, followed immediately by the yellow and green circuits. Modern hydraulic networks operate under immense mechanical pressures of around 3,000 pounds per square inch; they do not simply vanish and self-restore in seconds without an underlying cause. The preliminary inquiry notes that fluid samples and physical components have been dispatched for metallurgical and forensic testing, yet it provides no plausible technical explanation for how three sealed, isolated fluid lines could simultaneously depressurize and self-recover at 36,000 feet.
The second critical issue that the preliminary report fails to resolve is the operating flight crew’s controversial decision to continue the journey to New Delhi rather than executing an immediate emergency diversion. Telemetry confirms that when the hydraulic collapse occurred over the Kolkata Flight Information Region near the Odisha coastline, the aircraft was thrown into an acute aerodynamic upset, spiking upward by 372 feet before plunging 292 feet below its assigned cruising altitude. Inside the cabin, where seatbelt signs had been switched off, unfastened travelers and cabin attendants were violently thrown into luggage racks and ceiling panels.
The resulting injuries were extensive: twenty passengers and four flight attendants required urgent medical attention upon touchdown, with four individuals sustaining severe spinal fractures and deep lacerations requiring immediate hospitalization. The cabin itself suffered structural wreckage, including shattered ceiling panels, dislodged overhead stowage lockers, a twisted jumpseat, a torn exit handle, and a dislodged lavatory fixture. Despite suffering an unprecedented multi-system control failure and managing an in-flight mass-casualty event, the flight crew chose not to divert to several capable, fully equipped international runways within immediate reach, such as Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, or Raipur. The decision to bypass nearby coastal airfields and fly another hour to the capital raises serious questions regarding operational decision-making, crew resource management, and standard airline emergency protocols that the preliminary report leaves completely unaddressed.
The third unresolved dimension lies in the complex intersection between human impairment and aircraft mechanical behavior. The AAIB investigation revealed that the 34-year-old pilot-in-command returned a confirmed non-negative result for psychoactive substances during mandatory post-flight drug testing, identified by subsequent laboratory analysis as cannabis metabolites. Following the disclosure, Air India acted decisively by terminating the captain’s contract with immediate effect. However, the accident report explicitly avoids establishing any operational or causal bridge between the captain’s positive drug screening and the technical failure of the aircraft. Telemetry confirms that the 32-year-old first officer was acting as the pilot flying when the sudden hydraulic depressurization disengaged the autopilot and triggered a two-second stall warning, with the captain taking over manual control only after the initial pitch upset occurred.
Did the captain’s cognitive state impair his perception of the aircraft's physical damage, directly influencing the decision against an emergency diversion? Could human input on the flight deck have inadvertently interacted with hydraulic control actuators, or were the mechanical breakdown and the pilot’s substance screening merely an extraordinarily unfortunate coincidence? By leaving these factors disconnected, the preliminary findings leave a glaring void in understanding the flight deck dynamics during those chaotic seconds.
Compounding the technical intrigue is an operational maintenance record noted in the report, which shows that the eight-year-old aircraft had been dispatched from Phuket under an approved Minimum Equipment List deferral relating to its Power Transfer Unit. In multi-engine commercial jets, the power transfer unit serves as a reversible mechanical bridge designed to transfer hydraulic pressure between the yellow and green systems without mixing their actual fluids. While operating under deferred maintenance exemptions is a common and regulated reality in global aviation, aerospace analysts are questioning whether an underlying electrical malfunction or auxiliary pressure surge within the deferred sub-system could have triggered a cascade of false sensor alerts or pressure valves trips across the entire flight control network. Technical teams from Airbus and the French aviation accident bureau have been brought in to evaluate whether the aircraft's control computers received erroneous digital feedback or if genuine physical cavitation occurred across the lines.
With the final, definitive accident investigation report not expected until August 2027, the international aviation community is left grappling with the disturbing implications of flight AI-2379. When an airliner drops hundreds of feet in smooth cruising skies, the traveling public relies on regulatory watchdogs to deliver uncompromising, exhaustive clarity. Until investigators explain the physics behind a spontaneous triple hydraulic failure, justify the bypass of emergency diversion airfields with dozens of injured passengers aboard, and clarify the real-world operational consequences of pilot impairment on the flight deck, the critical lessons necessary to prevent a future tragedy will remain disturbingly unresolved.