AI171 Ahmedabad Air Crash: Narrative Review of Emergency Response, Hospital Surge, Forensic Identification, and Health-system Resilience

Abstract

Aviation crashes are high-impact mass-casualty incidents that challenge prehospital rescue, triage, hospital surge capacity, forensic victim identification, and psychosocial support. The Air India Flight AI171 crash in Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025, was an urban aviation disaster with major implications for emergency systems because it occurred in close proximity to a tertiary care medical complex and generated simultaneous casualties on board and on the ground. This narrative review synthesizes publicly available official reports, governmental and institutional communications, and relevant peer-reviewed literature to examine the documented health-system response to the AI171 crash and to identify implications for hospital preparedness and health-system resilience. The available evidence suggests that the response involved rapid incident activation, multiagency coordination, expansion of emergency and mortuary capacity, structured victim identification workflows, and centralized communication. However, the event also highlights persistent vulnerabilities common to large disasters: documentation overload, technology gaps, language barriers, staff fatigue, VIP visit disruptions, and the operational difficulty of handling fragmented or burned remains. International experience from other air crashes, including the Tu-154M and A310 disasters, provides additional context for the importance of disaster victim identification systems, rehearsed incident command, and early family liaison. The AI171 crash therefore offers a clinically and operationally useful case for reviewing aviation disaster management in India and comparable settings, with the central focus on health-system resilience and preparedness rather than aviation accident causation.