Air India Jet With CEO Onboard Diverts To Delhi, Following Crash

Today, we’re seeing absolutely horrifying scenes out of Ahmedabad, as a London-bound Air Boeing 787 crashed shortly after takeoff, with 242 people onboard. While a minor detail in the scheme of things, I think it’s interesting to note a reason that another Air India Boeing 787-8 diverted this afternoon.

Air India’s Delhi to Paris flight returns to Delhi after takeoff

Today (June 12, 2025), one of Air India’s daily flights from Delhi (DEL) to Paris (CDG) diverted. Specifically, AI143 was operated by a 10-year-old Boeing 787-8 with the registration code VT-ANU.

The plane took off from Delhi at 1:26PM, ready to operate the 4,088-mile journey to France. The aircraft climbed up to 38,000 feet and flew southwest for roughly an hour, before making a u-turn and returning to Delhi. The aircraft landed back in Delhi at 3:59PM local time, just over 2.5 hours after it first departed.

So, why did the aircraft divert? Coincidentally, this was the same aircraft variant as the one involved in the crash, but that’s not the reason for the diversion. Instead, reports suggest that the reason is because Air India CEO Campbell Wilson was onboard this flight, headed to Paris for next week’s Paris Air Show.

Clearly the decision was made that the priority was having him on the ground in India to deal with this crisis for the airline. Keep in mind that Air India doesn’t have Wi-Fi on its 787s, so this made contacting him a bit challenging.

Presumably the pilots were alerted from operations about the situation, and the crew then let Wilson know. I’m curious to what extent details were relayed to passengers. I can’t imagine that the crew announced “hey, a jet identical to this one just crashed, so we need to return to India so that our CEO can deal with the situation.”

I suspect this was instead blamed on “operational reasons,” or something, and given the lack of Wi-Fi, passengers were probably very confused until they landed back in Delhi, and connected to their phones. Presumably the airline will arrange another flight to Paris.

I can’t help but wonder if some passengers may feel uncomfortable taking it, in light of all that happened, plus the flight being operated by the same aircraft variant (to be clear, I’m not saying that’s logical, but fear often isn’t logical).

Was Air India’s decision to divert the flight reasonable?

People online are divided about whether diverting a flight to drop off the CEO in a time of crisis is a reasonable decision.

Some people argue that the plane should’ve continued to Paris, and Wilson could’ve then turned right around, and been back in Delhi within 24 hours. At a minimum, 200+ passengers are probably looking at a delay of six or more hours (conservatively), so that’s a lot of wasted time.

At the same time, this is a time of crisis and horrible tragedy for the company, and it’s not unreasonable that the company needs the CEO on the ground in India to be able to manage the situation and communicate publicly as much as possible, ASAP.

Personally, I think this was completely reasonable on Air India’s part. It’s one thing if the diversion were over something that wasn’t actually serious, but we’re talking about what’s potentially the most significant plane crash we’ve seen in a very long time.

The airline industry is one of passion, and I can’t even imagine the horror that Wilson had to come to terms with when he learned what happened. Airline executives are usually focused on the business side of things, but also have an unwavering commitment to safety. To learn of one of “your” wide body jets going down must be bone-chilling.

Bottom line

An Air India Boeing 787 scheduled to fly from Delhi to Paris returned to its origin, landing there around 2.5 hours after it first departed. This was because Air India CEO Campbell Wilson was onboard, and was needed on the ground in India to deal with this tragedy.

While this of course represented a significant amount of wasted time for passengers, I think this was a fair enough decision, given the level of tragedy we’re seeing.

What do you make of this Air India diversion?