Tension between the US' NTSB and Indian investigators at one point reached so high that the US side even threatened to withdraw support for the probe.
Temporary link: When two American black-box specialists landed in New Delhi in late June, urgent messages arrived on their phones.
Don’t go with the Indians, their colleagues told them.
Earlier that day, Indian authorities had told their American counterparts of a new plan to unlock the mysteries behind the first deadly crash involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
They wanted the U.S. technical experts to take a late-night flight on a military plane and then drive to a remote area. At an aerospace company’s lab there, the experts were supposed to analyze flight-data and cockpit voice recorders pulled from the wreckage of the Air India jet that crashed nearly two weeks prior.
But that plan for the recorders—commonly called the black boxes—worried Jennifer Homendy, a top U.S. transportation official. She and other American officials were concerned about the safety of U.S. personnel and equipment being taken to a remote location amid State Department security warnings about terrorism and military conflicts in the region.
The National Transportation Safety Board chairwoman made a flurry of calls, including to Sean Duffy, President Trump’s transportation secretary, as well as the chief executives of Boeing and engine-maker GE Aerospace.
At her request, the State Department sent embassy officials to intercept the NTSB recorder specialists at the airport, and the Americans stayed in Delhi.
The previously unreported episode marked a high point of tension between Indian government officials, who are leading the probe into the June 12 crash, and the American experts assisting them. The investigation has been marked by points of tension, suspicion and poor communication between senior officials of the two nations.
In June, in the crucial early days of the investigation, Homendy complained about delays in downloading data from the Air India flight and insisted Indian officials extract information from the Air India black boxes at their facility in Delhi or at the NTSB’s lab in Washington, according to the draft of an unsent letter from Homendy to India’s minister of civil aviation.
The friction has been fed by each country’s high stakes in the investigation, which is continuing and could take a year or more.
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