Gaurav Taneja, popularly known for his YouTube channel Flying Beast, recently shared his opinion on the Air India aircraft that crashed in Ahmedabad on June 12, killing 241 of the 242 people on board. He responded to online claims blaming the deadly crash on a mistake made by the pilots. Defending the pilots, Gaurav explained why he believes the crash did not occur due to pilot error. For the unversed, Gaurav served as a commercial pilot for over a decade and was a captain at Air Asia before getting involved in a whistleblower scandal.
In the video he shared, Gaurav said, “Pilots outside India are claiming that the crash happened because the Indian pilots retracted flap instead of the gear because the videos before the crash show that the gear is down. Pilots gear up when the flight is 100 feet above the surface. They said wings are supposed to create lift, which is supposed to keep the aircraft in the air and when you retract the flaps there is a loss of lift and that loss of lift caused the flight to go down but I have a serious problem with this theory.”
He added, “It’s very easy to blame the pilots when they are not there to defend themselves. Boeing and Air India both are big companies so leave them and let’s blame the pilot. Also, it gets easy to claim insurance if you blame it on the pilot. That is one more reason for big companies to not take it on themselves. Americans think Indian pilots aren’t very competent but that’s not the case.”
Gaurav insisted that this theory is false, in his view, as both handles — for flap and gear — are not located near each other and are far apart, making it very unlikely for a pilot to confuse the two. He also demonstrated that even if the pilots accidentally pulled the wrong handle, they had a window of 18 seconds to correct the mistake. However, he admitted that he has never flown a Boeing 787, which is the model that crashed, but noted that he has flown Airbus aircraft, which have similar functionalities.
“There is Murphy’s Law that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. If something has to go wrong, it will go wrong whether it happens in one or ten years. This has happened with so many pilots. Even if you take the flap up, the whole process takes 18 seconds,” he said.
Gaurav Taneja shared a picture of the Boeing 787 aircraft and defended the deceased Air India pilot, explaining that it’s unlikely they confused the gear handle with the flap handle as the two are placed far apart. (Pic: Flying Beast/YT)
He further pointed out that even if one pilot made the mistake, the other pilot would likely catch it as it would fall within their peripheral vision, allowing them to correct the error. Gaurav noted that such incidents had occurred in the past due to confusion between flaps and gear, which is why changes were implemented. “Pilots were mixing gear with flap. It has happened before but a flight doesn’t crash because of this reason. None of the aircrafts have gone down because of this reason,” he said.
Gaurav shared another point defending the pilots, stating, “Even if the flap is zero and both the pilots made the mistake, an aircraft is certified to fly on a single engine, on full weight, full fuel and everything.”
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He ended his video saying, “At this point of time everything is an assumption. However, I don’t agree with this theory.”
