Reports on AI plane crash premature, speculative: US probe agency NTSB says it fully support AAIB probe
'Recent media reports on the Air India 171 crash are premature and speculative. India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau just released its preliminary report. Investigations of this magnitude take time. We fully support the…
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First Post
4 hours ago
- First Post
AI171 crash: Probe pending in India, new US aviation regulator boss rules out fuel switch glitch
Commenting on the devastating Air India plane crash, the new head of the US's Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), Bryan Bedford, dismissed the possibility of an inadvertent movement of the aircraft's fuel control switch. read more The wreckage of the Air India plane that crashed moments after taking off from the Ahmedabad airport, lies on a building, in Ahmedabad. Both switches feeding fuel to the two engines of Air India flight 171 were cut off followed before the plane crashed in Ahmedabad, seconds after taking off, the first investigation report into the crash has revealed. PTI As the investigation into the Air India 171 plane crash continues, the new head of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ruled out mechanical issues as the cause behind the crash in Ahmedabad. The new FAA boss went on to suggest that the fuel control switches on the doomed AI 171 were manually moved, hinting at a pilot error. In a statement on the matter, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford dismissed the possibility of an inadvertent movement of the aircraft's fuel control switch. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'We can say with a high level of confidence it doesn't appear to be a mechanical issue with the Boeing fuel control unit. We feel very comfortable that this isn't an issue with inadvertent manipulation of fuel control,' Reuters quoted FAA administrator Bryan Bedford as saying. Meanwhile, Indian authorities, who are currently investigating the matter, requested patience for the final report. They urged both the public and experts to refrain from drawing conclusions and did not comment on Bedford's recent remarks. The matter is still under investigation As per the preliminary report released by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner's fuel supply to engines had been cut off, causing it to crash. While it is not concluded what caused the fuel switches' position to change, soon after the report was released, Western media started alluding to a pilot error. In the report, it was also mentioned that the cockpit voice recording revealed that one pilot asked the other why he had moved the switches, to which the latter replied he hadn't. In light of this, several Western news outlets started speculating about the mental health of the pilots and started to report more about their personal lives. Amid the chaos, Boeing is maintaining a cautious stance on the matter. Reacting to Bedford's statement, Boeing said: 'We'll defer to the FAA for any comments on this.' According to Reuters, the FAA chief made the remarks while he was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an air show in Wisconsin. In support of this assertion, Bedford cited an evaluation conducted by FAA employees who had 'taken the units out, tested them and had inspectors get on aircraft and review them'. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
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First Post
2 days ago
- First Post
Air India crash: How to spin-doctor and peddle narratives, the Western way
Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore used to terrorise villainous Western media by suing them in his courts. They learned to toe the line read more There has been a virtual masterclass lately in the creation and dissemination of biased narratives. Not only in the case of the ill-fated Air India 171 (Boeing 787, June 12, 2025) that crashed, but also in some other, unrelated instances. The age-old practices of 'truth by repeated assertion' and 'dubious circular references' as well as 'strategic silence' have all been deployed in full force. The bottom line with the Air India flight: there is reasonable doubt about whether there was mechanical/software failure and/or sabotage or possible pilot error. Any or all of these caused both engines to turn off in flight. But the way the spin-doctors have spun it, it is now 'official' that the commanding pilot was suicidal and turned off the fuel switch. Boeing, the plane maker, and General Electric, the engine maker, are blameless. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD This is, alas, not surprising. It is in the interests of Western MNCs to limit reputational damage and monetary loss related to their products. They do massive marketing by unleashing their PR agencies. We also saw how they protect themselves in other instances. A leaked Pfizer contract for their Covid vaccine insisted that if anything happened, it was the user's problem, not Pfizer's: there was no indemnity. Incidentally, a report on July 19 said that the Pfizer Covid vaccine can lead to severe vision problems. Oh, sorry, no indemnity. What is deplorable in the Air India case is that the AAIB, the Indian entity investigating the disaster, chose to release a half-baked preliminary report with enough ambiguity that a case could be (and definitely was) built up against the poor dead pilots. Any marketing person could have read the report and told them that it would be used to blame the pilots and absolve the manufacturers. Besides, the AAIB report was released late night on a Friday, India time, which meant that the Western media had all of one working day to do the spin-doctoring, which they did with remarkable gusto. Meanwhile, the Indian media slept. Whose decision was this? Clearly, Indian babus need a remedial course in public relations if this was mere incompetence. Of course, if it was intentional, that would be even worse. There is a pattern. In earlier air accidents, such as the Jeju Air crash involving a Boeing 737-800 in South Korea in December, the pilots were blamed. In accidents involving Lion Air (Boeing 737 Max 8, 2018), China Airlines (737-200, 1989), Flydubai (737-800, 2016), ditto. I am beginning to believe that a lot of Asian pilots are poorly trained and/or suicidal. Ditto with the F-35 that fell into the ocean off Japan. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Truth by repeated assertion is a powerful force for gaslighting the gullible. I wonder what excuses we'll hear about the Delta Airlines Boeing 767 whose engine caught fire in the air after take-off from LAX on July 20. The pilots didn't die, so they will speak up. Besides, they were Westerners. I am eagerly awaiting the spin on this. I also noticed with grim amusement how the BBC, WSJ, Bloomberg, and Reuters, and so on were busy quoting each other to validate their assertions. This is a standard tactic that India's 'distorians' (see Utpal Kumar's powerful book Eminent Distorians) have perfected: B will quote third-hand hearsay from A, then C will quote B, D will quote C, and before you know it, the hearsay has become the truth. But if you wind it back from D to C to B to A it becomes, 'I hear someone told someone that xyz happened.' Out of thin air, then. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD There is also the lovely tactic of strategic silence. It has been used to un-person people who ask inconvenient questions. It has also been used to defenestrate inconvenient news. Just days ago, under the Deep State-installed new regime in Syria, hundreds of minority Druze were brutally massacred. There was video on X of armed men in uniform forcing Druze men to jump off tall buildings, and desecrating their shrines. Similarly, there is a brutal reign of terror, rape, murder, and thuggery against Hindus, Buddhists, and others under the Deep State-blessed regime of Mohammed Yunus in Bangladesh: a clear genocide. Neither Syria nor Bangladesh gets any headlines. There are no loud human-rights protests as in the case of Gaza. This is not news. It is un-news. 'Manufacturing Consent' all the way. India is particularly vulnerable to this gaslighting because Indians consume a lot of English-language 'news.' Scholars have long noted how the US public has been maintained in a state of ignorance so they could be easily manipulated. The same is true of the Indian middle class. So, there is yet another reason to do less in English. Fooling, say, the Chinese or Japanese public is a lot more difficult. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The fact is that even though Indians may be literate in English, they do not understand the context and the subtext of what is fed to them by the likes of The Economist, NPR, The Financial Times, The New York Times, etc. The best way I can explain this is the 100+5 analogy in the Mahabharata: they may fight with each other on domestic matters, but Anglosphere and Deep State are in cahoots when it comes to international matters. Things are both getting better and getting worse. On the one hand, social media and its imprint on generative AI mean that it is ever easier to propagate fake news (in addition to deepfake audio and video, of course). On the other hand, despite the problem of charlatans and paid agents provocateurs getting lots of eyeballs, the large number of Indians on social media may push back against the worst kinds of blood libel against India and Indians, of which there's plenty these days, often created by bots from 'friendly' countries. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD This is a serious matter indeed. One solution is to do a version of the Great Chinese Firewall and ban wholesale the worst offenders. Indeed, a few of the vilest handles have been ejected from X. However, the pusillanimity with which notorious Pakistani handles were unbanned, then re-banned after outrage, shows there's something rotten in the Information Ministry. Almost exactly the same as the unbanning of Pakistani cricketers, then rebanning after outrage. Is there anybody in charge? Information warfare is insidious. Going back to the Air India case, I think the families of the maligned pilots should sue for gigantic sums for libel and defamation. The sad state of the Indian judiciary may mean that, unfortunately, this will not go far. However, there is precedent: Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore used to terrorise villainous Western media by suing them in his courts. They learned to toe the line. If this tactic does not work, India should eject the hostile media. The Indian market is increasingly important to Western media (not vice versa) because soon there will be more English-reading consumers in India than in the Five Eyes Anglosphere. I should say that in quotes because as I said above, most Indians are blissfully unaware of the hidden agendas, and naively believe them. But 'Judeo-Christian' culture is very different from dharmic. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD I keep getting emails from The New York Times with tempting offers to subscribe to them for something really cheap like Rs. 25 a month. They need Indian readers. I have been shouting from the rooftops for years that one of these charlatan media houses needs to be kicked out, harshly, with 24 hours' notice to wind up and leave. As in the Asian proverb, 'Kill the chicken to scare the monkeys.' The monkeys will notice, and behave. Otherwise, the information warfare is just going to get worse. The writer has been a conservative columnist for over 25 years. His academic interest is innovation. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
Time of India
3 days ago
- Time of India
Air India crash families in UK have ‘received the wrong bodies', say lawyers
LONDON/NEW DELHI: Some of the families of Britons killed in the June 12 Air India 171 crash in Ahmedabad have been sent wrong or commingled mortal remains, British lawyers acting for them told TOI. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Taking note of an earlier report on the issue by Daily Mail, the Indian govt has clarified that the victims were identified as per 'established protocols and technical requirements' and that they 'are continuing to work with the UK authorities on addressing any concerns related to this issue,' MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Wednesday. 'All mortal remains were handled with utmost professionalism and with due regard for the dignity of the deceased,' he added. 'Sadly, the stories of mistakes with mixed remains have been repeatedly recounted to us by families we represent,' Sarah Stewart, aviation partner at Stewarts, a law firm, told TOI. 'Our clients feel that they were let down, with allegedly apparent mistakes by the forensic teams in India and insufficient support by British consular services, the foreign office and the British crisis response teams for the families of those British citizens killed in the accident. ' Demetrius Danas, a specialist aviation law lawyer at Irwin Mitchell, which is also advising some families affected by the , told TOI some families have reported receiving remains not belonging to their loved ones. He said this raises 'serious questions around the recovery and repatriation process' and 'just adds to the hurt and pain they continue to face'. James Healy-Pratt, aviation partner at Keystone Law in the UK, which is representing around 20 families of victims, told TOI they 'expect PM Starmer to raise these serious issues with PM Modi this week in London. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The families deserve urgent answers and assurances about the whereabouts of their loved ones.' The identification of mortal remains and DNA matching was carried out by the Ahmedabad civil hospital. A UK govt spokesperson said: 'Formal identification of bodies is a matter for the Indian authorities.' However, allrepatriated remains are being independently investigated in line with UK processes, by the Inner West London Senior Coroner, based in Westminster in the UK. The coroner opened and adjourned her inquest into 12 deaths on July 9. Disaster victim identification experts from the UK have been deployed to Ahmedabad to support the UK's consular response and 'to understand in-country processes for victim identification, mortuary operations and support services', the UK govt said. Relatives of one victim had to abandon their funeral plans after being informed that their coffin contained the body of an unknown passenger rather than their family member, the Daily Mail reported. In another case, the 'commingled' remnants of more than one person killed in the crash were mistakenly placed in the same casket. They had to be separated before the funeral could go ahead, the Mail reported. The BBC spoke to a third person, Miten Patel, who said the coroner told him that 'other remains' were found in his mother Shobhana's casket. Both his mother and father, Ashok, were killed in the crash. "There has to be a level of responsibility that you're sending the right bodies to the UK,' he said. The bungled repatriation was uncovered when Inner West London senior coroner Prof Fiona Wilcox sought to verify repatriated Britons' identities by matching their DNA with samples provided by the families. Around 12 bodies have been repatriated to the UK so far. James Healy-Pratt of Keystone Law told the Mail: 'I've been sitting down in the homes of these lovely British families over the last month, and the first thing they want is their loved ones back. But some of them have got the wrong remains and they are clearly distraught over this. I think these families deserve an explanation. One family now has no one to bury because it was the wrong person in their casket. And if isn't their relative, the question is, who is it in that coffin?'
