When Dreams Fall from the Sky – A Call for Accountability in Aviation Safety

Published By Jerry Adesewo On Jun 23, 2025

When Dreams Fall from the Sky – A Call for Accountability in Aviation Safety

Jerry Adesewo

The tragic crash of Air India Flight 171 last week did not just claim lives—it severed dreams mid-flight. The Joshi-Vyas family, like so many others aboard, carried more than luggage; they carried futures. A father’s ambition to bridge continents through technology, a mother’s healing hands seeking new horizons, children on the cusp of reinvention—all erased in a moment of mechanical or human failure.

My poem, “Some Dreams Are Never Meant to Come to Pass,” which I shall share at the end of this article, was written in their memory, but their story demands more than an elegy. It demands action.

The Unforgivable Ordinary

Air disasters follow a grim script: headlines blaze, condolences pour in, investigations promise “lessons,” and then—silence. The Joshi-Vyases’ unfinished journey exposes this cycle as complicity. Why do we accept that modern air travel, a marvel of human achievement, remains vulnerable to preventable errors? Preliminary reports hint at engine thrust loss and landing gear issues, yet this tragedy is not an “accident” but negligence wearing the mask of fate.

In the poem, the line, “No warning. No mercy,” is an indictment of an industry where profit margins too often thin safety margins. India’s aviation sector, booming yet beleaguered by staffing shortages and aging fleets, cannot afford another compromise, likewise, in Nigeria. I recently saw on social media how a Nigerian airline finished boarding, and the door had to be closed manually by two of the airline’s staff, with the help of a long iron rod. The passengers, unaware of the risk they had just walked into, were left unattended. Grief must galvanize reform: stricter oversight, transparent reporting, and consequences for corners cut.

Dreams as Legacy

What haunts is not just loss, but proximity. The family’s last selfie, taken in joy, is now a relic of “what almost was.” Yet as clearly stated in the poem, “real dreams do not vanish quietly.” Their echoes persist in cousins who vow to continue their path, in colleagues who adopt their projects, in passengers who will never board a flight without wondering, “Could this be me?”

Memorials matter, but so does policy. I hope that the Joshi-Vyases’ names, and those of hundreds of other victims of air mishaps around the world, will adorn not just vigils but revised safety protocols. I hope their dream of a better life becomes our demand for safer skies.

The Sacred Ache

The poem’s closing lines—“that sacred ache can change the world”—are a provocation. Ache alone is useless; it must fuel scrutiny. Ask: Why did this happen? Who failed? The DGCA’s recent suspension of Air India executives over crew scheduling violations is a start, but systemic failures demand systemic solutions.

This week, as the black box data is analyzed, let us honor the 280+ lives lost by refusing to look away. Let us honour all unwilling victims, from around the world, of air mishap and every other form of avoidable accidents. Some dreams may never land, but their wreckage must light the way forward.

Some Dreams Are Never Meant to Come to Pass

(for the Joshi-Vyas family and their unfinished journey)

Not every dream is destined for daylight.

Some shimmer at the edge of dawn

and vanish before the sun arrives.

Some dreams are never meant to come to pass

not because they were foolish,

but because the world can be cruel,

arbitrary,

and unjust.

They dreamed the way millions do:

He, with a head full of code

and a heart tethered across continents

London in his footsteps,

India in his blood.

She, a doctor,

whose hands had mended countless lives,

now ready to heal her own,

to cross oceans,

to build again

not as escape,

but as evolution.

Their children didn’t know

that this was more than a flight;

It was a beginning.

A one-way ticket to a story

they would grow into.

New schools.

New language.

New bedtime stories about courage and sacrifice.

But some dreams never touch ground.

Airborne,

alive,

then—gone.

No warning.

No mercy.

A single moment tore through the sky

and everything unraveled.

The selfie they took

all five faces gleaming,

became an epitaph.

The future, so carefully planned,

now locked forever

in a photo never meant to be last.

Some dreams are never meant to come to pass.

And that is the agony.

Not that they failed,

but that they were so close

within touching distance,

within sighing distance

and still,

denied.

But dreams,

real dreams,

even when broken,

do not vanish quietly.

They haunt the living.

They sit at empty dinner tables.

They walk behind surviving siblings.

They rise in memorials,

and in stories like this one.

They echo in the voice of a cousin who says,

“I will finish what they began.”

In the tears of a mother who still whispers,

“She almost made it.”

In the silence between headlines

that forget too soon.

Some dreams are never meant to come to pass—

but they pass into others.

They become lessons.

Warnings.

Songs.

They become the soil where new hope grows,

tender but fierce.

We do not forget.

We dare not.

For even when the dream is lost,

its longing remains.

And that longing

that sacred ache,

can change the world.

Because even when some dreams

are never meant to come to pass,

they still matter.

They still move us.

They still make us dream.