India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau is expected to release its final report on the Air India AI-171 crash soon, bringing the first formal account of why the London-bound jet went down seconds after take-off from Ahmedabad on 12 June 2025 and killed 260 people.

The report is likely to land while Air India is already under strain from the deepest crisis of its post-privatisation era. Chief executive Campbell Wilson resigned midterm last month, the carrier's losses for the year ending March 2026 reportedly reached $2.4bn, and the airline remains the biggest loss-making entity inside the Tata Group, which took it over from the government in 2022.

The crash report matters because it could set the tone for how regulators, the airline and its owners judge what went wrong on the most devastating day in Air India's recent history. The facts already on the table point to a carrier struggling to steady itself: in March, a Delhi-to-Vancouver flight was forced back after nearly eight hours because it did not have regulatory approval to enter Canadian airspace, and India's aviation regulator found 51 safety violations in an annual audit last year, including seven of the highest level.

That combination has left Air India facing questions that go well beyond one accident. The airline has been grappling with a leadership vacuum, financial losses, external pressures and operational lapses at the same time, while Singapore Airlines, which holds a 25.1% stake, remains tied to a turnaround that has yet to deliver the clean break promised when the Tata Group regained control in 2022.

Former Air India executive Jitendra Bhargava said the company needed a clear vision now, not later, adding that the five-year plan drawn up after privatisation had run into widening gaps between ambition and execution. Aviation analyst Alok Anand said the Vancouver diversion was highly unusual and showed there had definitely been a breakdown of process somewhere.

Local media reported that the Tata board met last week, discussed cost-cutting measures and warned staff of tough times ahead, a sign that the carrier's difficulties are being treated as structural rather than temporary. If the crash report confirms wider failures in oversight or procedure, Air India will have to answer not just for one catastrophic flight, but for whether its overhaul has been too slow to match the risks now surrounding it.