Stephanie Pope, Boeing’s Seattle-based head of commercial airplanes, rushed to get to India after Thursday’s deadly 787 crash in northwestern city of Ahmedabad.

In a message to a Boeing customer, Pope said she planned to travel to support Air India, the airline operating the London-bound plane that crashed into a medical hostel shortly after takeoff. That customer asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the situation.

Pope had planned to attend the Paris Air Show, a trade event where aerospace executives meet with customers, partners, Wall Street analysts and reporters to showcase the future of the industry.

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said Friday that he and Pope would miss the show in order to focus on supporting Air India and investigators as they work to determine what went wrong. It was unclear whether Ortberg traveled to India as well.

A Boeing spokesperson declined to comment on the executive’s travel.

“As we have said, our thoughts are with the loved ones of all those affected by Air India Flight 171. We are focused on supporting the investigation and our customer,” the spokesperson said.

Investigators from India, the U.K. and the U.S. are searching for the cause of the crash, and it could take months to fully understand what went wrong. Investigators have recovered the two so-called black boxes on the plane, including the cockpit voice recorder, which captures audio in the cockpit to try to understand what was happening during the plane’s final moments.

The Air India plane crashed about a mile from the airport, slamming into a medical hostel building and killing 270 people, as of Monday.

The crash immediately renewed concerns about Boeing’s safety record, particularly after two fatal 737 MAX crashes six years ago and a January 2024 incident when a panel flew off an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX. The 787 had never been involved in a fatal crash before Thursday.

Boeing and General Electric, which makes the engines on the 787 that crashed, canceled planned events at the Paris Air Show in light of the crash.

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