The crash of an Air India flight heading for London from Ahmedabad, has underscored something very vital, says a former airline pilot.
Sam Thomas, spokesman of the Airline Pilots Association, answering questions on The Gist show, called for calm and sobriety in media coverage of the disaster. He decried the tendency of media channels to bring in experts of doubtful expertise to talk about why the Air India crash may have happened.
“Social media has many armchair specialists,” he noted, “I’m amazed that some of them can come and say authoritatively how a 777 functions. Their entire narrative is based on blurred CCTV, low quality footage that has been taken and one footage from a mobile phone.”
Some of these claimed that the flaps may not have taken, but the electronic checklist doesn’t allow a pilot to proceed further without resolving it. Even if somebody found a way to bypass the electronic checklist, the moment full thrust is applied the aircraft will scream with bells and alarms going off.
Now that the black box containing the cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight recorder has been recovered, the best is to wait for the analysis to be done, which can be completed in 48 hours.
There is only one company in India that can do black box analysis, he said. But in this case, the black box may go to Singapore or the US. Investigators from the UK are also coming to assist in the Air India probe.
In his view, that is the best guarantee of no cover up being attempted to absolve either the company or the airline in the event of any negligence.
“Airplanes are pretty safe,” said Thomas, “(but) the nature of aviation is such that from time to time we do have accidents. If you notice, this year 2025 is not the best year for aviation in the United States with 11 accidents so far.”
Tune in for more in this conversation with Sam Thomas, spokesman of the Airline Pilots Association.
