YouTuber Gaurav Taneja, better known as Flying Beast online, spoke about the timeline of the ongoing Air India Flight 171 investigation. He said that a preliminary report should be made available within 30 days of the crash. On June 12, the Air India Ahmedabad-London flight crashed into a building moments after take-off, killing 270. Since then, Taneja has offered insight into the tragedy, as a former commercial pilot with a decade of experience. Hours after the crash, he said that the likeliest cause would be a ‘dual engine failure’; he has since amended his theory to include human error. In a new interview, he questioned the decision to send the flight’s recovered black box to the United States, and said that this is a conflict of interest because the manufacturer of the aircraft, Boeing, exercises major power in America. The decision to investigate the black boxes in an Indian facility or whether to send them overseas is yet to be taken. Sources have said that it will depend on the condition of the black boxes.
Appearing on the Prakhar Ke Pravachan podcast, Taneja said that everything that could go wrong on that fateful day went wrong. He said that, to the best of his understanding, the pilots accidentally killed the wrong engine after take-off, after one of the engines had already stalled on the runway. He also pointed to systemic issues in the airline industry, and questioned the reasons why experienced pilots could’ve made such an error. He said that pilots are often made to fly under fatigue, and on subpar aircraft that don’t meet full safety requirements.
Explaining how data is recorded on flights, he said, “There are two boxes, CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) and DFDR (Digital Flight Data Recorder). When I used to fly, the CVR would record the last two hours of communication. The DFDR is a comprehensive log of the flight, every possible data point is recorded. Pitch, bank, roll, fuel, everything… These are the two boxes that need to be recovered, which they were. But, surprisingly, they said that they’ve been damaged, and can’t be processed here. So, they were sent to the US.”
Taneja continued, “That was shocking, because it was a Boeing aircraft. Boeing is an American company, and you’ve sent the boxes to America. There’s a conflict of interest… The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau here falls under the government’s ambit. There has been a fight to make it independent, because a body that’s under the government can be easily manipulated… The reports that are made in India aren’t made so that future accidents can be avoided; they’re made to save someone.”
Addressing the past complaints made against Boeing, Taneja said, “The US economy relies on Boeing. It’s a very big company. There are a couple of lawmakers who were initially at Boeing, and now they’re in Congress. Boeing has power.” A few years ago, Boeing came under fire after two 737 Max aircraft crashed because of a software update that wasn’t communicated properly to pilots or airlines. The entire fleet was grounded until the issue was addressed and resolved.
Indian Express reported on June 20 that the decision on whether to send the black boxes abroad hasn’t yet been finalised. “The AAIB investigation is progressing steadily with all necessary support from local authorities and agencies. Key recovery work, including site documentation and evidence collection, has been completed, and further analysis is now underway,” the Ministry of Civil Aviation said on Thursday. “It will depend on the condition. The investigators will have to ascertain the absolute integrity of the black boxes, and if they are confident about it, they would like to analyse them at the new lab instead of sending it to an overseas facility,” a source had earlier told The Indian Express.
