Air India flight AI171 crashed on Thursday – killing all but one of the 242 people onboard – and friends and relatives assistance centres have been created at London Gatwick and other airports
The co-pilot on the doomed Air India flight AI171 pulled the plane’s wing flaps instead of retracting the landing gear, according to an aviation expert.
This simple – but devastating – mistake caused the plane to crash into the medical college in Ahmedabad, western India, commercial airline pilot and YouTuber Captain Steve said yesterday. All but one of the 242 people onboard the plane, which was destined for London Gatwick Airport, died.
Steve, who analyses plane crashes and close calls, 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.”
Raising the flaps would have caused the plane to lose airspeed and altitude quickly, something Steve stresses would have been very difficult to control. This, he feels, would have led to the horrific impact, marking the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade.
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Steve believes his theory may be the case because the 787’s composite wings would normally bend during take off as lift forces take it into the air. However, in footage taken moments before the impact, the Air India plane appears to show no such bending, supporting the speculation the flaps which help lift the plane off had accidentally been retracted.
Investigators will only know conclusively what happened once they have found and analysed both of the plane’s black boxes. One of these was recovered on Friday morning among wreckage and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation will now study the recordings.
Other theories being considered, the Mirror highlighted, include potential engine failure, runway miscalculation and a bird strike. Steve, though, acknowledged that, while both pilots were experienced professionals, human error can happen.
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Captain Sumeet Sabharwal led the flight and was assisted by First Officer Clive Kundar and, between them, the pair had more than 9,000 hours of experience. They were among the 241 people killed in the atrocity.
The sole survivor, 40-year-old Brit Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, said: “I still can’t believe how I came out of it alive. For a moment, I felt like I was going to die too.” His family members, from Leicester, have flown to India to be my his bedside, having expressed their shock to reporters on Thursday afternoon.
Vishwash somehow walked from the plane after the middle section of the aircraft – where he was seated in seat 11A – was spared from the worst of the impact. He continued: “When I opened my eyes and looked around, I realised I was alive. I still can’t believe how I survived.”