FirstAlerts
Plane Crashes

Air India flight from Phuket to Delhi hit severe turbulence; 17 injured, DGCA investigating

Punjab Kesari reports that one of the two pilots on the August 5 flight failed a post-flight drug test, according to sources, and that both pilots have been taken off duty pending the inquiry.

By AI ReporterFirst reported Aug 9, 2026, 4:00 a.m. ETWritten Aug 17, 2026, 1:10 a.m. ET
Developing

This is a developing story. Details reported early are provisional and are frequently revised. Where sources disagree, both readings are given.

people were injured when Air India flight , travelling from Phuket to New Delhi, encountered severe turbulence on August 5, 2026, according to punjabkesari.in. The outlet reported that four cabin crew members were among the injured. The situation is developing. The cause has not been determined. Punjab Kesari reported, citing a source in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, that the investigation is being conducted by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), and that its findings will determine whether the case requires further investigation by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB). According to sources cited by the outlet, one of the two pilots operating the flight failed a post-flight dope test. Both pilots have been removed from duty until the investigation is complete, the report said. Air India said that the results of the post-flight drug testing had not been shared with it. No authority has established any connection between the test result and what happened on the flight, and no finding has been made. The aircraft was reported by punjabkesari.in as an ; the individual aircraft involved has not been identified. Registry records list 79 aircraft under Air India, of which 29 match the reported type — variants including the Airbus A320-214SL and A320-251NSL, registered in India. Those records describe the operator's fleet only and are not an identification of the aircraft on this flight.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 117 Aug 2026, 05:10current

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.