US fears cover-up in Air India crash
Posted by blackglum@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 93 comments
Previous post by another user was removed by a moderator for not complying to rules around the title.
BennyMound@reddit
Do we still trust the US though?
Relevant-Cod-6807@reddit
The best way to protest is to never, ever, fly Air India. I’m doing my part!
Treerific69@reddit
I was already doing that
HelloSlowly@reddit
I’ll also re-add what I wrote earlier
If india wants to ever have any semblance of being a superpower in the future (they won’t), then letting the truth come out of this crash shouldn’t be an issue for them at all. But that weird arrogant sullen love of country will be their undoing and I can guarantee they’ll never ever reveal the truth.
Shackletainment@reddit
China is arguably a super power (or at least on track to be one) and they're also covering-up/trying to supress a likely pilot suicide. These cover-ups are targeted at their own population rather than the world at-large.
The Soviets had a long history of cover-ups too.
adario7@reddit
Dangling the super power title infront of India feels rather cruel. Its a nation with a billion poor people and won’t be anywhere close to developed even in a century from now.
FWitU@reddit
China pulled it off
adario7@reddit
China pulled it off with massive reforms, they managed to mobilise a billion people labour force to build that nation. For that you need visionary leaders that have the balls to make tough decisions.
India is not that country.
Churchill was right about India:
lamboi133@reddit
this guys post history is just blatant racism towards india. fucking ban him. he has zero actual positive discussion to bring to this sub
WAR_T0RN1226@reddit
Jesus man, India has massive issues but this is just blatant racism. That Churchill quote is just a 1:1 copy of the old American pro-slavery argument that "slavery is beneficial for the enslaved because they can't provide for and govern themselves"
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sneakin_rican@reddit
Yeah agreed. Why does it feel like every time a valid critique of India or Indians crops up on this website a bunch of monstrous racists come out of the woodwork to say “OMG I know right??? Indians are ALL useless filthy animals and Churchill was right about EVERYTHING!!!”.
Like damn bro, that is not where I was going with that…
dancccasf@reddit
No use pointing this out on Reddit. It’s a safe space for racists and their cronies. Painting Churchill in good light is something I didn’t know was possible in 2025
FutureHoo@reddit
Imagine unironically quoting Winston Churchill - a man in charge while millions starved in india and well documented for his racism - and thinking you’re in the right
The comments here are full mask off. India has completely bungled the investigation but some of the upvoted comments here are absolutely vile.
New_Relative_1871@reddit
This sub is one of the most racist on Reddit. Its disgusting
New_Relative_1871@reddit
this sub is a racist cesspool. imagine quoting churchill about india, the man who starved millions of bengalis to death. Hell is hot, and it's waiting for you.
californiaye@reddit
Idk if u have been to china but it’s kinda scary and not very nice
HelloSlowly@reddit
Except if you read the article, the bureau leader literally is said to have told US officials “we’re not a third world country” and “can do anything you can do”. That to me screams “we’re a superpower too”, so I’d wager, a lot of Indians think they’re a superpower already. They’re not. They won’t be. They never will.
They’re a lower middle income country that in all metrics punches below their weight in nearly all metrics. So when I mentioned that they won’t be a superpower, it’s not to sound mean, it’s to take away from their sense of inflated ego.
Mike__O@reddit
Don't worry, the Indian bots will be all over these comments soon trying to say it's far more likely that an unrepeatable cascade of failures happened to two independent engines that caused the computer to log the movement of the fuel control switches from "Run" to "Cutoff" one right after the other at coincidentally the same time it would take a human hand to move between the switches to actuate them.
The denial and coverup is far more embarrassing than admitting that this was one of the worst cases of murder-suicide in history.
MikeInPajamas@reddit
Yeah, and it's not like it was anyone's fault. I don't think you can screen for this sort of intent. If that's what happened (and evidence strongly supports that), then just like Germanwings, it's just the rule of large numbers that these things are bound to happen given enough time.
Completely tragic. The Indian authorities are seriously misguided to be anything but completely forthcoming.
Tuhks@reddit
That’s probably what scares them though honestly. How do you take action to prevent something like that? If they cant announce a plan to prevent it from happening again, they cant regain trust. Better cover it up and say it was something fixable malfunction (in their view).
MikeInPajamas@reddit
It happened in Germany. It happened in India. It probably happened in Malaysia, with MH370. It'll happen one day in the US. It'll happen one day in the UK. Given enough time...
What can you do to fix a broken person? Every time you get into a cab, you're trusting the driver to not drive into oncoming traffic. It would only take a moment. Near instantaneous. But you don't think about it, because it's an extremely unlikely thing to happen.
Airplane accidents are high profile _because_ they're so rare. Commercial air travel is ridiculously safe, and people are bad at realizing that.
"Yeah, but what if?"... Sometimes it's just your time. If you stayed at home, a truck could plough into your house. If you live in an apartment, a neighbor could start an inescapable fire. If you by train it could derail. If you go by car you could get in a wreck due to someone else's fault. Sometimes it's just your time.
What could fix it? In this specific case being able to shut down the engine in a moment is what doomed the flight, but that doesn't mean that a more difficult sequence, say that required both pilots, would be better. Maybe that would make other engine emergencies more dangerous. Maybe there are 50 different ways for a pilot to doom a flight.
Maybe more automation? Take humans out of it? One day, maybe. But, for me personally... I feel comfortable knowing there are trained pilots up front doing the critical phases of flight, even if for most of the flight the computers are doing the easy stuff.
Sometimes it's just your time.
WesternBlueRanger@reddit
Also happened to the Chinese. See China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735. The final report hasn't been released, and probably never will because the Chinese government has said releasing the report would "endanger national security and societal stability".
Mrc3mm3r@reddit
To be fair to the Chinese, their statement did very clearly imply that was what happened. It wasn't explicit, but they didn't try to concoct any way to draw conclusions otherwise, and there wasn't this whole national "debate" the way the Air India thing and the EgyptAir case have and had.
Hulahulaman@reddit
Maybe allow pilots to receive regular mental health checkups without fear of losing their medical.
Ecthelion-O-Fountain@reddit
Germanwings was a guy who had identified and taken time off for mental issues. Then they let him come back. I had heard the Air India captain had also missed time, but no explanation as to why. There’s no easy solutions here.
GrandpaKnuckles@reddit
Second.
Ecthelion-O-Fountain@reddit
It’s already happened in the US. It’s just been a while. And that one guy who at least used an empty airplane.
Tontara@reddit
In the German case it was revealed that the pilot's father had multiple times contacted the airline and begged them to not let his suicidal fly any aircraft because he feared that he would do something stupid. So i do not agree that it is not preventable.
Monster_Voice@reddit
The way you take action against that is by getting with the fucking times (looking at you FAA!).
It's almost like the authorities as a whole just can't accept that pilots are PEOPLE not machines.
We have thousands of protocols for critical and preventative maintenance for the machines, but essentially no guidance for maintaining the minds of the people flying them.
Feel depressed as a pilot? If you tell somebody, the FAA will give you real and tangible reason to be depressed.
I can't speak for the Indian Government, but if they're even half as ass backwards when it comes the mental health as we are, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how somebody suffering from genuine mental illness could slip through the cracks.
Altaccount330@reddit
India is a democracy but it is an illiberal democracy. There are no barriers to dishonesty in India. The government, beyond elections, does not answer to the people and is not transparent.
Sasikuttan2163@reddit
Don't worry, this isn't the first time we are seeing coverups happening. But a coverup of an aviation accident of this scale is a first though. They were way more transparent about earlier crashes.
Texas_Kimchi@reddit
You're blaming India? You're racist!!!
Mike__O@reddit
It's not 2021 anymore. That accusation has been falsely thrown around so much that nobody gives a fuck anymore. It has no power
WorknForTheWeekend@reddit
He was being sarcastic, but the fact that overt racism has gone mainstream in 2025 isn’t the flex you think it is.
blackglum@reddit (OP)
It's sarcasm judging by his profile haha. Russian speaking people care very little for this shit haha.
abscissa081@reddit
The 3 exclamation points didn’t conclude you to that?
Texas_Kimchi@reddit
I posted in another forum that Indias Jets were outdated and they called me a racist.
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blackglum@reddit (OP)
Or my personal favourite:
"There was an engine failure and the pilot did a memory checklist shutoff"
but then can't answer to why one pilot questions the other to cutting off the fuel, and then the other denying having done that.
Lol.
HelloSlowly@reddit
The fact that the parties in the country involved are so brainwashed into thinking mental health wasn’t a factor just goes to show how flawed their thinking and institutions are.
It’s not a big deal if they came out and admitted “dude was suicidal”. It happens. Humans have demons sometimes.
But nooo, so prideful is the culture that they actually think it’s beneath them to reveal that.
A sad slap in the face for the families who are also brainwashed into thinking it’s Boeing at fault instead of this incident being a great reminder to Indians that no profession is above depression and poor mental health.
blackglum@reddit (OP)
I wrote this in the other post but I helped operate a school in Chennai (India) for the physically and mentally handicapped. It has lots of western funding and is in one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods. The neighbours despise that such a beautiful building and school is there, because the people within it (mentally and physically handicapped), are taboo in Indian society. They’re forgotten and frowned upon. And many of the students arrive to have having been abandoned by their families.
Had such an attitude been directed at corruption and cleanliness, India would be a better place.
Ill_Poem_1789@reddit
Indian here. Slightly off-topic, but I think it is better I reply to this.
Things are changing now. Most people today are sane enough to not think of it that way. There was this old taboo that people are born that way due to misdeeds in their past life, but it has changed now. There has been a great push over the past few years to change that mindset, and it shows, at least amongst the people I know personally.
We have made strides in the latter over the last few years (everywhere except the area near our national capital for some reason) and the former has kinda improved a bit (still not, it is ingrained in the minds of many Indians as a jugaad system).
The younger generation cares about mental health and "civic sense", but the older generations are still in that centuries-old mindset. I'm optimistic for the future.
I'm replying with the hope that this post didn’t have racist intent (I don't think it does, checked your post history and you've been respectful to India and Indians in general).
Altaccount330@reddit
They default to pushing all blame outward. They love blaming the British and US for everything they can.
FatGimp@reddit
If I've ever learned anything about a certain culture, it's that they hate anything that demotes their pride.
Business-Shoulder-42@reddit
Here comes cameras in the cockpit
chutiyapa_01@reddit
Partly surprised this isn't already a thing.
blackglum@reddit (OP)
The previous post by another user was removed by a moderator for not complying to the subreddit rules around titles. So I’ve reshared the article here with the correct title.
I’ll also share the comment I left on the post, here too.
—
That concern is entirely understandable. Given my own experience, both in real-world conversations and in the online sphere, suggests a tribal defensiveness pattern activates whenever criticism is directed at India or its institutions.
The instinct to defend “the team” at all costs, even in the face of serious failures, is something I’ve seen all throughout India.
The irony, of course, is that in their frantic attempt to deflect from a bad reputation, they merely confirm it. The very defensiveness meant to rescue their image only drives the dagger in deeper. As I’m sure we’ll see in a moment…
theagentK1@reddit
You’re basically building an unfalsifiable yet flawed narrative:
— If an Indian agrees with you, they’re “finally being honest.”
— If an Indian disagrees with you, it’s “tribal defensiveness” and “proving your point.”
That’s a classic rhetorical trap.
Criticizing India or Indian institutions is fair game. People push back for all kinds of reasons: bad data, missing context, double standards, or just disagreement about how serious something is. Reducing all of that to “they’re defending the team at all costs” is lazy armchair psychology, not analysis.
You’re also taking your limited “experience” and confidently projecting it onto 1.4 billion people as some kind of national pathology. If someone did that about your country or community, you’d recognize it for what it is – stereotyping dressed up as concern!
BlueBeryCheseCake2@reddit
Can you link to non-paywalled article?
Asystole@reddit
archive.is link
blackglum@reddit (OP)
A user on the previous post said this:
and another user also shared this:
Enjoy.
mynewusernamedodgers@reddit
US fears is maybe a stretch
BuckeyeSRQ@reddit
Fuel switches don’t magically go from the on to off position. They have to be lifted and moved. Either it was pilot suicide or incompetence. Either way let it be a lesson never fly airlines based in the third world unless you have to!! The majors out of the US, GCC, Europe, SE and east Asia are far superior and far safer!
nguyenm@reddit
Isn't this one of the many hazardous attitude CRM courses have taught us to mitigate?
Black boxes themselves are likely based on late-90s, early 2000s technology so definitely many developing countries have the ability to navigate it. However when it comes to the recovery of a mangled remain of what's left of a black box, the egotistical nepotistic apointees of the Indian civilian governments are key hindrances in the quest to get to the bottom line of this crash.
For context, I've seen anecdotes of power bills in one Indian province where anti-corruption message & propanda are printed allover on the end-user bills. If corruption exist in the low-level, then the top is all but rotten.
HelloSlowly@reddit
The arrogance of a person living in a third world country to openly and without any second guessing say “we are not a third world country” shows just how warped that thinking is.
Indians are lovely people. But Indians with a false sense of arrogance are the worst people on the fucking planet.
ZippyDan@reddit
Anyone from any race with a false sense of arrogance can be a massive irritant or an evil asshole, but "worst people on the planet" seems a bit hyperbolic.
Puzzled_Conflict_264@reddit
Can say the same about first world countries. They have the arrogance of showing “we are from the first world countries and whatever we say is the rule of the land”.
So please keep your opinions towards yourself. We have seen during the 737 Max initial crash how it was blamed on Pilots instead of Boeing.
RedSquirrel17@reddit
My memory of the 737 Max discourse was entirely different. The aviation community and the public at large were absolutely scathing at Boeing. There have been numerous documentaries and articles criticising Boeing's rotten culture and the average person, even if they know nothing else about aviation, now has a negative opinion of the company. While it is true that Boeing tried to deflect blame at first, there was no cultural instinct from the public to protect them.
Madroc92@reddit
Eventually, yes. Early on there was a lot of discourse about the possibility of pilot error, with strong implications that the accident crews were not trained to the same high standards as Westerners. William Langeweische wrote a long form piece for the NY Times and it was a blot on an otherwise excellent career as an aviation writer.
KnowledgeSafe3160@reddit
That is also true. Following the runaway stab checklist would’ve disabled mcas
blackglum@reddit (OP)
Well said. That difference cannot be understated.
InfernoBA@reddit
Everyone here in the U.S. absolutely blamed Boeing for the crashes. Their reputation is in the gutter right now.
What you might be remembering is some discussion that the pilots could have still prevented the crashes if they followed the checklist items correctly, but the fault is still on Boeing and no one outside the fringes has denied that.
HelloSlowly@reddit
India has lovely people. So don’t be the kind of Indian that’s hated by the world because these kinds of statements put you into the latter category. Be better. Think rationally. The facts are out there son. Who turned off the engine switches?
Puzzled_Conflict_264@reddit
Let the facts come out. We agree the switches were moved from run to cut off and then again to run.
We have no indication on who did it or why it happened. Before bashing the dead, let’s wait for the facts. We know we can’t trust Boeing.
blackglum@reddit (OP)
One of the pilots.
It happened because one of the pilots turned them off. Both denied doing so.
The pre-lim report by AIBB itself says they have no recommendations to Boeing. Nor is Boeing's trust here relevant, India's trust however is.
Puzzled_Conflict_264@reddit
Please give me exact proof? They are called circumstantial evidence. Not definitive.
Wait for the complete report before going full racist.
TogaPower@reddit
How the hell is coming to the most obvious conclusion of the crash “full racist”? What a dumb comment
Puzzled_Conflict_264@reddit
Third world country so can’t trust them? We had enough western propaganda that we don’t trust any western news without full report on this specific subject.
blackglum@reddit (OP)
Wow cold. Love it haha.
theagentK1@reddit
You are going on a tirade with an assumption that the US officials are apparently speaking the truth! They are trying to quote what Yugandhar apparently told them. Somehow all of this seems to be a nice work of fiction!
blackglum@reddit (OP)
One visit to India and you will understand immediately it is a hopeless country.
RebahlSouljah@reddit
...said the oz. Fuck off with that shite, mate
blackglum@reddit (OP)
We are discussing India here. But whatever reality you live in, Australia is no equivalence to India here. India’s conduct simply does not occupy the same moral or political universe as Australia’s.
UserRemoved@reddit
r/aviation should encourage and remain open to the impacts of political and greed risks within the industrial policy. As we see businesses move work to unregulated or dangerous sectors we must take on the greed directly.
Cardinal-guy-2023@reddit
Note to self: do not fly this carrier.
meshreplacer@reddit
I think a fix for future designs is when the fuel cutoff switches are actuated then a 5 second loud annunciator kicks off. you have 5 seconds to cancel the fuel cutoff after the 5 seconds it then activates.
This would occur if there has been no engine fire alarm etc..
TLCM-4412@reddit
Don’t fly Air India… simple
AIRdomination@reddit
Anyone have an article not hidden by a paywall?
Suspicious_Goose_855@reddit
And it does sound like US will at least want to try and cover for Boeing since their reputation has taken some hits with the recent incidents.
India doesn't really do coordinated coverups like US very well, since there are too many interest groups. And if it tries, it'll mostly fail, especially in the civilian side of things. But there are various rabid unions, departments, bureaucrats and the red tapes that will make things move at a snail pace.
And, the only "cover-up" that can happen is making Boeing pay a huge amount to Air India or sell them planes at subsidized rates by making sure the pilots get the blame, so essentially US and India are in the same page then.
That last time India did a "cover-up" was for a US company Union Carbide, which killed 25,000 people, but they didn't even try to hide it, it was done all in the open. Let's see how this one rolls.
BrianOBlivion1@reddit
Sounds exactly like Egypt Air Flight 990.
undockeddock@reddit
This sub might have the worst and fragile mods in all of reddit. The equivalent WSJ news article gets locked for having a paywall. Now a non paywalled article on the same topic is "too political"
Its clear the mods personal preference is just to have no discussion on the issue. Good lord.
LowerCourse2267@reddit
Yeah, the US has absolutely no standing at the moment to opine on a cover up.
Unless it’s supporting it wholeheartedly?
WatTambor420@reddit
I fear being buried alive- now that shit is scary !!
TheSlutForWater_v2@reddit
Indian here. Almost all of our unions are as vicious as your police unions. The report showing pilot error was rejected by the union and now is pending trial (IIRC) in one of the high courts in India.
blackglum@reddit (OP)
How much faith do you hold for your institutions and high courts in India? Do you treat them similarly or differently?
TheSlutForWater_v2@reddit
TBH, civil aviation authorities maintain probably the highest level of trusts, comparable to their global counterparts.
High courts, it’s a hit and a miss. Sometimes the whole point of this litigation is to force the company to settle without accepting fault (same as in your country, I suppose). I’d go on a limb and say that the level of cookoo in our judges are same as the level of State Supreme Courts in your country (High courts are equivalent to that here), but that doesn’t say much on its own.
blackglum@reddit (OP)
Thanks for sharing!
aviation-ModTeam@reddit
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Dr__-__Beeper@reddit
No shit Sherlock, what's your next case?
blackglum@reddit (OP)
Why Indians are incapable of self-criticism.