When Air India flight 171 heading to London crashed and burst into flames right after taking off from Ahmedabad, a city in West India, people around the world were stunned by the tragedy.

All but one of the 242 passengers onboard perished as the plane crashed into a residential area on Thursday, June 12. Additionally, at least eight individuals on the ground were also reported dead as a result of the incident.

India’s Office of Prime Minister Narendra Modi released a statement on Sunday confirming that a comprehensive investigation was initiated by the AAIB (Air Accidents Investigation Branch). Simultaneously, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is conducting a separate investigation following international guidelines due to the aircraft being of American origin.

Both Boeing – which manufactures the 787 Dreamliner airplane which crashed – and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced they had teams standing by to support investigators.

Meanwhile, Air India announced Wednesday that it would temporarily cut international flights on widebody aircraft by 15 percent. 

But while preliminary findings may be made public within the next few months, a full report into the tragedy isn’t expected to be published for at least a year.

And according to aerospace engineer and Boeing whistleblower, Joe Jacobsen, that delay is not only unnecessary, it could prove fatal. He knows because he’s seen it all before.

Jacobsen worked at both Boeing and the FAA for decades. He is the man who raised the alarm about issues at the aeronautic giant in the wake of two fatal crashes involving the 737 MAX aircraft and killing a total of 346 people across 2018 and 2019.

Last year, he testified at a senate subcommittee hearing on the 737 aircraft and Boeing’s safety culture.

Now, he has spoken exclusively with the Daily Mail to blow the lid on the finger pointing and blame shifting that, he said, goes on between airlines and aircraft manufacturers and needlessly delays the conclusion of vital reports into what lies behind crashes such as the Air India tragedy.

Jacobsen said, ‘Investigators would be able to have a pretty good idea of what happened within a week, and I would think they definitely should have 95 percent of the information within a month.’

Indeed, both of Flight 171’s key information sources – the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder or black box – had been recovered by Sunday.

He said, ‘It only takes a couple of days to download and have a look at that.’ But, Jacobsen said, despite these valuable sources, much of the actionable findings won’t be released to the public or acted upon for months.

Shockingly, he went onto allege that part of Boeing’s motivation in stalling on the release of potentially damaging findings, is financial.

He explained, ‘A lot of people are invested in Boeing and so they try and delay this stuff so people forget about it, or at least they can make their changes before the bottom falls out.’

These accidents take a massive toll on company finances. Boeing Co’s stock closed at $203.75 on June 12, down 4.8%, after plunging as much as 8% in pre-market trading.

One week after the crash it had continued its downward trajectory, hovering around $198.35 on Wednesday.

Certainly, analysts and investment firms have been quick to downplay the impact and immediacy of the Air India crash to their investors.

RBC Capital Markets, the global investment banking and capital markets arm of the Royal Bank of Canada, issued an investors’ note last week in which they cautioned against any rush sell-off on the back of the Air India crash.

They stated, ‘It can often take months to fully understand the causes of a crash, and the implications for Boeing and its suppliers.’

But from his experience, Jacobsen said, ‘They know 95 percent of what happened after a week – but then the next 11 months are used up by people trying to control the message, and point fingers at one another, who’s responsible, who’s not responsible.’

Jacobsen’s worry is that, if the cause for last week’s crash is a systemic issue across the 787 Dreamliner fleet, another crash could happen before it has been publicly identified and addressed.

With over 1,100 Dreamliners still in operation there has already been another scare.

On Monday, another Air India pilot turned his 787 Dreamliner around 30 minutes into the flight, citing a technical issue.

The airline told Reuters that the decision to return had been made as a matter of ‘abundant precaution’ and the flight had landed safely – they did not disclose the nature of the technical issue.

US officials have stated there is no immediate evidence to warrant grounding the rest of the aircraft worldwide.

But in the absence of any findings, this approach troubles Jacobsen. He said, ‘A lot of times when it shows up on one airplane, there’s other airplanes that have the same or similar issue.

‘We shouldn’t be saying we’re going to take our time and figure this out. No. We have to have urgency. There’s another crash that could happen if we’re not working as quickly as we can to get the information out as rapidly as possible.’

This is not empty scaremongering. Jacobsen has seen it happen. He was working at the FAA when an Indonesian domestic flight, Lion Air Flight 610, plunged into the Java Sea 13 minutes after take-off on October 29, 2018. All 189 passengers on board the Boeing 737 MAX perished.

Jacobsen recalled, ‘I got the flight data recorder data a week after the crash, and it took five minutes to see what the problem was.’

But a full report into the disaster wasn’t released for a year. In the meantime, there was another fatal crash when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed six minutes after take-off in March 2019. In that instance all 149 passengers and 8 crew members were killed.

Both incidents involved the Boeing 737 MAX and both were found to be caused by the same flawed flight control system.

Boeing recently reached a $1.1 billion deal with the US Justice Department over the two crashes.

Jacobsen isn’t the only one frustrated by the slow drip feeding of information. Lawyers for another Boeing whistleblower, Sam Salehpour, put out a statement on Friday, criticizing the FAA for sitting on a report about safety issues with the Boeing 787 – the same model as the Air India crash – and 878 for months.

Salehpour went public with his concerns last year, stating that Boeing was using ‘shortcuts’ in the making of the 787 Dreamliner fuselage and sparking a federal investigation into the company.

But on Friday his lawyer Debra Katz expressed frustration at its slow progress. She said, ‘The FAA previously represented to us that they had completed an investigation, suggested that it had meaningful and significant findings that supported Mr Salehpour’s allegations, and it was going to release them imminently.

‘That was months ago. We urge the agency to disclose the results of its investigation.’

For Jacobsen the solution is clear. Issue findings promptly, allowing problems to be addressed and giving families the answers they need, or ground affected aircraft until the cause of these devastating crashes has been made public.

Because as things stand, he fears, more people could die while investigators and Boeing drag their feet and families wait.

Boeing did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment.

Boeing President and CEO Kelly Ortberg issued a statement following the crash which included the assurance, ‘I have spoken with Air India Chairman N. Chandrasekaran to offer our full support, and a Boeing team stands ready to support the investigation led by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau.’