Four days after Air India flight AI 171 crashed less than a minute after take-off from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad to London Gatwick Airport, the airline has decided to replace the flight number with a new code.
According to officials familiar with the matter, the idea behind changing the number is to avoid triggering trauma or bad memories in the minds of passengers and travellers.
The flight from Ahmedabad to Gatwick Airport will be renumbered to AI 159. The return flight will also be changed to AI 160.
On Thursday, June 12, flight AI 171 crashed with 242 people onboard, including 12 crew members. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who visited the site of the crash, confirmed that only one of the 242 people onboard survived. More people were killed when the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner rammed into a hostel of a medical college. As of publication, the number of dead is over 270.
The last time any airline renumbered its flight was in 2014 when a Malaysian Airlines plane on the Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route operating as MH370 was renumbered to MH318. The Malaysia Airlines flight 370 was an international passenger flight that disappeared from radars on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia to its planned destination, Beijing Capital International Airport in China.
Indonesian low-cost carrier Lion Air too re-numbered its flight from JT610 to JT618 after the flight, carrying 181 passengers and eight crew members, crashed into the Java Sea on October 29, 2018, 13 minutes after take-off. All 189 occupants died.
(With inputs from multiple news reports)
