Is this what caused Air India crash? Pilot reveals mistake he thinks co-pilot made in Boeing disaster that killed 279
A VETERAN pilot has revealed what he believes caused the devastating Air India crash that killed 279 people.
YouTuber and commercial airline pilot Captain Steve Chen gave his chilling theory after watching the horrifying video of the disaster.
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The London Gatwick-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner appeared to lose height moments after take-off and smashed into a doctor's hostel in Ahmedabad, India.
Some 241 passengers and crew are believed to have been killed - leaving a miracle sole survivor - and 28 people on the ground also died.
Captain Steve said he believes to co-pilot may have made a simple - but devastating - error as the plane climbed.
From analysing the footage, he believes the pilot asked his colleague to retract the landing gear - but he then pulled the wrong switch.
He said: "Here's what I think happened, again folks this is just my opinion. I think the pilot flying said to the co-pilot said 'gear up' at the appropriate time.
"I think the co-pilot grabbed the flap handle and raised the flaps, instead of the gear.
"If that happened, this explains a lot of why this airplane stopped flying."
Captain Steve explained the 787's wings would normally bend during take off as lift forces take it into the air.
But the footage appears to no show this - fuelling theories that the flaps which help to lift the plane were retracted.
Full video of the crash shows the plane heading down the runway before lifting into the air.
'I opened my eyes & slipped out'…Brit sole survivor of Air India crash details escape
After barely 30 seconds the plane appears to dip and goes begins an agonising descent back to the ground.
It then exploded in a fireball as it crashed into the nearby doctors' hostel.
Investigations are still ongoing into the cause of the crash - with at least one of the black boxes recovered from the wreck.
Both pilot Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and co-pilot Clive Kunder and believed to be among the dead.
Mr Sabharwal, who had 8,200 hours of experience, while his colleague Mr Kunder had 1,100 hours.
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The sole survivor of the crash - Vishwash Ramesh - could also provide key clues as to what happened to the plane.
He said cabin lights began flickering before the jet sank through the air and crashed.
Recalling the moments before tragedy, Vishwash, from Leicester, said: "When the flight took off, within five to 10 seconds it felt like it was stuck in the air.
"Suddenly, the lights started flickering - green and white.
"The aircraft wasn't gaining altitude and was just gliding before it suddenly slammed into a building and exploded."
Vishwash's flickering lights revelation comes after a passenger, who took the plane the day before the crash, claimed electrical parts such as the back-of-seat screens weren't working.
Aviation experts have speculated that the reports of dodgy electrics could be a sign of a power failure, possibly explaining the crash.
Air India is keeping an open mind as to what went wrong and caused the deaths of 52 Brits.
Theories being considered include issues with the engine thrust, flaps and landing gear - as well as a bird strike and a pilot error.
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The Independent
16 minutes ago
- The Independent
‘It's all very raw': Twenty victims of the Air India plane crash connected to the same London temple
Hundreds, if not thousands, of people have been left in mourning after the Air India plane disaster claimed more than 240 lives on Thursday. But one north-west London community, some 4,000 miles away from the Ahmedabad crash site, is feeling the impact more than most. Twenty of the victims have connections to the same temple in Harrow, its leader has said, with multiple families now trying to come to terms with what has happened. Among those killed in the Dreamliner disaster are a mother and father who lost their son, a pilot, in a plane crash in France just a few years ago. Click here for the latest updates on the crash. Members of the British Gujarati community have been gathering to pay their respects and grieve at the International Siddhashram Shakti Centre, which is just tucked off the high street. Speaking to The Independent, spiritual leader Shri Rajrajeshwar Guruji described the crash as a 'huge loss', adding that he personally knew of 20 people who boarded the doomed Air India flight. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed shortly after clearing the runway at Ahmedabad Airport, with a huge fireball appearing after it collided into a medical college housing dozens of doctors. Mr Guruji, who is from the Gujurati region but has lived in the UK since 1993, said: 'I have good communication with the people there, and I woke up to see so many calls. There were messages to say there has been a crash. 'The day before yesterday my priest who works here in the temple had flown from Gatwick to Ahmedabad on the same flight. He was on the same plane that crashed but travelling on the way out.' After frantically calling his colleague who reassured him he was safe, Mr Guruji began receiving endless phone calls both from people on the ground in India, and from his worshippers who had lost loved ones or had known people on the flight. 'I had a message from a police officer from Gujarati who said the former chief minister Vijay Rupani was on it, he has previously worshipped here. I was then given a list of people on the flight from Indian police and I was checking the names, and I could see some of them were familiar. 'Then people kept calling me to say 'so and so were on the flight' and so I eventually knew 20 people personally who had been lost,' he said. He then spent the remainder of his day speaking on the phone to the families of the victims, and contacting their wider relatives to inform them and to offer them support and comfort. 'One family, they have lost a couple, a mother and father have both died. A few years ago, three or four years ago, their son died. He was a pilot, his flight crashed in France. It was a passenger jet and he was the pilot. Yesterday, his parents were travelling back from India and now both are gone.' According to Hindu beliefs, the process of cremation and scattering of ashes is a part of liberating the soul and bringing peace to the deceased. But the nature of the crash means that some of the victims' bodies may not be found. Police officers on the ground in Ahmedabad have described the scene as 'chaos' in their calls to Mr Guruji, and he remains in close contact with relatives and spiritual leaders in Gujurati. Navin Shah, a retired architect and former Labour chair of the London Assembly, worships at the Harrow temple. He was horrified by the crash that destroyed a densely populated area near his hometown. Having been born and raised less than 10 miles from the crash site, Mr Shah is intimately familiar with the area. He lived there for 15 years before moving to the UK and shared his concerns that the number of dead on the ground remains unknown. 'We know that the plane crashed into a housing complex called Meghani Nagar, but I understand there was a slum, a hutted area, with poor people living there. If they have been wiped out, that's another factor that deeply concerns me,' he said. Mr Shah first received a call at 8.30am from his nephew, who lives just four miles away from the airport, who informed him of the tragedy. Soon afterwards, he realised that the majority of those killed had connections to areas such as Harrow, Brent, and Leicester, and that his community would be disproportionately affected. 'We had a prayer at the temple last night and I met a young man, 20 years old, whose grandparents had perished in the plane,' Mr Shah said. 'I was speechless, I didn't have the heart to express my feelings - I pretty much broke down. One young lady had lost her father-in-law and she was crying away. It's all very raw at the moment.' Over the coming days, services and prayers are due to be held at the Harrow centre, including an inter-faith ceremony on Saturday to commemorate the dead.
Reuters
25 minutes ago
- Reuters
In Air India crash, canteen worker hopes for 'second miracle'
AHMEDABAD, India, June 15 (Reuters) - Around 30 minutes before an Air India jet crashed into a college hostel in India, Ravi Thakor, the cook in the hostel canteen, and his wife stepped out to deliver lunchboxes - leaving behind their two-year-old daughter and his mother. The grandmother and child are missing. Thakor is hoping for what he calls a "second miracle", one like the astonishing survival of the sole passenger among the 242 people on board the plane. Thakor said he first thought the loud bang he heard when the plane crashed on Thursday in the western city of Ahmedabad was a gas cylinder blast, but soon noticed the building he had just left was engulfed in flames. For days, he's been searching for his mother and his daughter at hospitals and the morgue to no avail. Police told Reuters they were treating it as a missing persons case. "If one of the plane passengers could survive the crash, there could be a second miracle and my mother and daughter could also be safe," a visibly distraught Thakor told Reuters outside one of the hospitals. His wife Lalita stood beside him, stone-faced. "We realise that the chances of finding them alive are bleak but we have not given up hope," Thakor said. In all, at least 271 people died in the crash - the 241 passengers and crew in the plane, and the rest people on the ground, mostly in the hostel building. Thakor and his wife have given samples of their DNA to hospital authorities but they are yet to hear if any matches have been found among the deceased. Families of victims have been waiting to take posession of their loved ones' remains for days as DNA profiling and other identification checks are taking time. The hospital's additional superintendent, Rajnish Patel, said on Sunday DNA samples of only 32 deceased have been matched so far. When the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner jet struck the hostel canteen on Thursday, many students were eating lunch. Steel tumblers and plates still containing food lay on the few tables that were left intact when Reuters visited the site later. Thakor's mother was still cooking when he and his wife left the hostel that day to deliver lunchboxes and he had just rocked rocked his daugher to sleep on a wooden swing, he said. "It is possible someone took away my daughter in the chaos that followed," he said. Of the 242 on board the plane, the only passenger who managed to survive was Viswashkumar Ramesh, 40, who squeezed through the broken hatch after the plane crashed and emerged with only minor injuries.
The Sun
2 hours ago
- The Sun
At least 7 dead in India helicopter crash as chopper carrying pilgrims goes down days after Air India disaster
SEVEN people including a toddler have died after a helicopter carrying Hindu pilgrims from a shrine crashed in the Himalayas. The horror accident in India's northern state of Uttarakhand comes just three days after the deadly Air India disaster in Ahmedabad, which killed at least 279 people. 2 2 The chopper reportedly crashed within just minutes of taking off, during what was supposed to be a 10-minute flight. The pilot and all six passengers were killed after the helicopter went down during a flight from Kedarnath temple in Uttarakhand state, according to local authorities. .
