Officials Clashed in Investigation of Deadly Air India Crash

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1. SS: In this fraught account for *The Wall Street Journal*, Andrew Tangel depicts the Air India Flight 171 investigation as a geopolitical tug-of-war waged over wreckage: U.S. NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy blocked a late-night Indian plan to fly American black-box specialists to a remote military-linked lab, citing security risks and warning she would pull U.S. support unless the recorders were analyzed in Delhi or Washington, a standoff that exposed deep mistrust, bruised pride, and clashing priorities between the two sides.

   The piece recounts how Indian investigators asserted sovereign competence (“we’re not a Third World country”) while restricting U.S. access to evidence and moving debris, as Americans fumed over delays that could conceal a broader Dreamliner safety threat. Once data was finally downloaded, it showed fuel-cutoff switches were moved in the cockpit and that the captain, Sumeet Sabharwal, did not pull back on the yoke as the first officer did, pushing many U.S. officials toward the grim thesis of deliberate pilot action, even as Indian pilot groups and some observers urged scrutiny of Boeing systems and warned against repeating the 737 MAX era’s scapegoating script.

   With lawsuits in India demanding independent oversight and both governments publicly cautioning against premature blame, Tangel frames the probe as a slow-burning contest between narratives of human malice and machine flaw, where every withheld update and every asserted certainty becomes another flare in a sky already darkened by 260 deaths.

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