By: Puli
June 17, Colombo(LNW): Aviation expert and veteran commercial pilot Captain Steve Scheibner has suggested that a critical error by the co-pilot may have led to the tragic crash of Air India Flight AI171, which killed all 241 people onboard and dozens on the ground.
The London Gatwick-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed just minutes after taking off from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, on June 12. Captain Scheibner, a former American Airlines pilot, shared his theory on his YouTube channel, pointing to a possible mistake involving the aircraft’s controls.
According to Scheibner, the co-pilot might have been instructed to retract the landing gear but mistakenly pulled the flap lever instead reducing lift at a crucial moment during takeoff.
“This is just my opinion,” Scheibner emphasized. “But I believe when the captain said, ‘gear up,’ the co-pilot may have accidentally grabbed the flap lever, not the gear lever. If that’s what happened, it could explain why the aircraft suddenly lost lift and crashed.”
He added that under normal conditions, the aircraft’s wings would show visible flexing due to lift forces during takeoff. However, video footage reportedly does not show this, further supporting the flap-retraction theory.
Meanwhile, air accident investigators in India have begun decoding the aircraft’s black box data and are interviewing pilots and crew who operated the aircraft in the days before the crash. Officials hope these steps will shed more light on the circumstances surrounding the disaster.
