The right engine of the Air India Dreamliner flight that crashed 36 seconds after takeoff from Ahmedabad's Sardar Vallabhbhai Airport was changed in March 2025, and the left engine was inspected in April, the airline's Managing Director, Campbell Wilson, said on Thursday.

The London Gatwick-bound plane was "well-maintained, with its last major inspection in June 2023 and another scheduled for December 2025", Wilson said in an email to members of its loyalty programme, Maharaja Club.

The aircraft and engines showed no issues during routine check before the flight, and the pilots - Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and First Officer Clive Kunder - had 13,400 hours of flying experience, he said.

As of now, a prevailing theory suggests that both engines of the aircraft failed or there was a hydraulic malfunction, which is supported by aural and visual evidence of the RAT, or Ram Air Turbine, deploying before the crash.

Experts, however, told the BBC that the condition of a plane's engine is not necessarily linked to its age, particularly in the case of the Genx-1B engines on the 787-8.

Wilson assured customers that "thorough safety inspections" had been ordered on Air India's Dreamliner fleet and that checks had been completed for 26, which are now cleared to fly.

As a precaution, "enhanced pre-flight safety checks" on all Boeing 787 planes will continue for the time being, resulting in a 15 percent reduction in their use.

This is expected to continue till mid-July.

Wilson said the time to perform these checks, and factors such as airspace closure over parts of West Asia, "led to a higher-than-usual number of cancellations on our long-haul network".

According to aviation regulator DGCA, Air India has cancelled 66 Dreamliner flights since the crash, with the highest number (22) the day after the disaster.

The plane had 242 people onboard, including the pilots and 10 crew members. All but one, a British-Indian man, were killed.

At least 33 people on the ground also died after the plane, which struggled to gain altitude after take-off, crashed into a residential area less than 2km from the airport.