One year after one of the worst aviation disasters in Indian history, the most unsettling reality is not that the final answer remains elusive. It is that, in the absence of definitive findings, competing certainties have rushed in to fill the void. Modern air travel rests on a simple social contract: passengers accept risks they cannot personally evaluate because they trust that when things go wrong, institutions will discover why, learn from failure and prevent repetition. That trust depends not merely on technical competence but also on transparency, independence and credibility.

The prolonged inquiry into the Air India Flight AI171 tragedy has become a test of all three. The preliminary findings appeared to narrow the field dramatically. The aircraft lost power because fuel to both engines was cut off seconds after take-off. Yet establishing what happened is only part of an accident investigation. The more difficult task is explaining why it happened. Was it the result of deliberate human action, an unimaginable error under extraordinary circumstances, or a systems failure that investigators have yet to understand? The distinction is not academic. It determines where responsibility lies, what........

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