According to the DGCA, the flight crew aboard Air India Flight AI171 - a Boeing 787 Dreamliner - made a critical Mayday distress call to Ahmedabad ATC immediately after takeoff at 13:39 IST on June 12, signaling a life-threatening crisis onboard the aircraft. The call, repeated three times, is the highest aviation alert, indicating extreme danger such as engine failure, fire, or sudden loss of altitude .

Captain Sumeet Sabharwal (8,200 flight hours) and First Officer Clive Kundar (1,100 hours) triggered the distress signal just seconds after departing runway 23, having climbed to around 625 feet . Strikingly, ATC received the urgent Mayday but got no further response from the cockpit - radio silence descending as the plane nosedived and crashed into Meghaninagar .

This sequence - Mayday call, silence, sudden crash - raises red flags about a catastrophic in-flight event. Investigators from the DGCA and AAIB are now probing mechanics, communications, and emergency protocols to unravel the sequence of failure. In the meantime, rescue operations continue and authorities work to notify families, while the aviation community awaits answers on this harrowing transmission’s meaning - and what went wrong so fast.