‘We just want answers’: AI171 crash victims’ families write to PM Modi for black box data.
Posted by JKKIDD231@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 57 comments
railker@reddit
Jeju 2216 families also wanted reports released, until they saw the reports and didn't like it.
What do the general public think they're going to do with raw black box data without context of correlated CVR transcripts and systems knowledge? It'll answer some questions and raise 100 more, IMO. It would be good to see what information's been confirmed so far, but an update isn't due under ICAO guidelines until July, on the anniversary of the crash.
Hopefully this continues as a smooth and clean investigation, and the NTSB does as they have before and pipe up on their own if they see the released report isn't showing the full picture.
Pretty-Ladder-4455@reddit
jeju, why not liked it?
PlanEx_Ship@reddit
The report outlined pilot error as the primary reason of crash (turned off wrong engine) and the concrete wall being more secondary result. MentourPilot has an excellent video on how this would have caused the crash.
I.e if pilots didn’t turn off the wrong engine they’d all have survived with one engine still available for critical systems.
But the families refused to put any blames on the pilot and believed the concrete wall was the main reason everyone died.
DeadFacesInMyPocket@reddit
But what was beyond the concrete wall?
Wasnt it just a TON of residential houses?
So basically they wish other families died instead of theirs? Not trying to be an asshole here; that is a totally natural human emotion and I also HIGHLY doubt any of them truly wish that, they just want their loved ones back. I feel for them greatly.
Regardless, based on the crash map, that is pretty much what happened, right? Pretty much the pilot seems to have messed up big time, the plane crashed and then hit a concrete wall instead of just pumelling over thousands of homes?
I haven't looked at this one in a while and also am not an aviation expert I just follow this sub because it is an interesting topic and people here are usually pretty nice. Just trying to better understand. The idea rhat the concrete wall is at fault when it was in a fully residential zone not meant for airplanes at all, is pretty silly to me.
Either way, looking st the crash map, I personally will make sure not be flying out of New Delhi or Mumbai anytime soon.
PlanEx_Ship@reddit
Are you looking at Air India accident or Jeju Air?
In case of Jeju, you can look up Muan International Airport on Google Maps, look at the south side of the runway. It's largely open area with highways on the side. If the localiser wall wasn't directly in front of runway, there *actually may potentially possiblly have been a chance* that the aircraft might not have disintegrated so violently and have some survivors.
Nobody can say that with certainty, however, since the perimeter of airport has its own concrete wall as this photo (much thinner than the localiser mound though...), and since the ground is not flat (slight downhill from runway end), aircraft may still have disintegrated violently at the speed it was going.
za419@reddit
And it is worth noting that the plane was basically still flying in the Jeju Air crash, just while it was scraping along the ground. Way too fast to stop cleanly in any sort of manner.
It'd probably have been better if they rolled out and hit the perimeter wall, but there was an imagination in the public eye that if not for the localizer mount the plane would stop cleanly and everyone would've been fine, which was absolutely not the case.
DeadFacesInMyPocket@reddit
I was looking at the Air India accident. My bad.
railker@reddit
We never got to see the report and haven't seen anything since, but all reports and statements from the families that did get to see it imply among the primary causes was the pilots shutting down the wrong engine.
From Wikipedia:
They've since tried to sue Boeing for "multiple failures in critical landing equipment" and there's been an parliamentary bill passed to launch an independent probe, not sure if that's actually been started yet. But there's been no official updates since January of 2025.
Planeandaquariumgeek@reddit
Sounds like Midland 092 all over again. Is the 737 just especially prone to pilots shutting down the wrong engine for some reason?
oscillatingsawgobrr@reddit
Didn’t the one turboprop crash in Taiwan that was caught on dashcam also involve pilot shutting down wrong engine?
h3ffr0n@reddit
The one clipping that highway overpass? I believe that was the case, yes.
railker@reddit
It's definitely happened on other aircraft as well, the major factor there isn't cockpit design so much as crews taking action in haste and without taking the time to ensure the correct critical actions are identified and verified.
Some1-Somewhere@reddit
We got this post with this set of FDR plots.
Very smoking gun.
Violetstay@reddit
Because there’s an extremely high likelihood the pilots were incompetent, panicked and shut down the engine that was still working which is what ultimately caused the crash.
Tricky_Big_8774@reddit
I think they're referring to the official report being delayed because of backlash from rumors it placed primary blame on shutting the wrong engine off. They seem to have their details mixed up, though.
Exact_Package_7264@reddit
yeah i see people getting very angry at modi for not releasing the raw black box data but like, what the hell is he supposed to do? how would releasing raw box data without a breakdown from their investigators (who, from what i've read about them, seem to be solid) be helpful in any way? i know that it's an awful situation but i really that waiting for the final report to be released is the best course of action.
UncleJohnsonsparty@reddit
I think a majority of the aviation community have a reasonable hypothesis on what happened unless some extraordinary evidence that has yet to be leaked appears. The big question is whether the national pride can truly handle this.
DisjointedHuntsville@reddit
Science isn't a majority vote though. There is no evidence supporting any conclusion at this point with certainty.
I could say "Aliens" and it lines up with all publicly released information so far. When did guess work and gossip become the standard for air crash investigations ?
railker@reddit
Well thankfully none of us here are investigators or responsible for releasing information to the public as would be tied to the investigation.
You're right, there's so much information we still would need to make a more solid conclusion, but with what we do know, there's an Occam's Razor of reasonable assumption to be made when you compare the two current leading roads of hypothesis. Wild electrical anomalies that coincidentally look just like pilot turning off the engines versus pilot turning off the engines.
We all had theories when the crash first happened too, and those shifted as the Preliminary was released and we learned more information. If information comes to light that defies the current prevailing theory, I guarantee you the aviation industry as a whole will follow that new evidence.
DisjointedHuntsville@reddit
None of you are investigators, but sure do like to roleplay like you know what you're talking about. That's the problem right there.
What bestows you with the authority to make that statement "two current leading roads of hypothesis" ? You're not investigators. . .the real investigators haven't said anything other than lay out a very very very limited set of known facts in a preliminary report that support no conclusions. So if you say "We're not investigators" and in the same breath say "here are the two leading hypothesis" . . .wtf, my dude? No official hypothesis exists.
The critical part here is the bar seems to be so different for crashes that occur in the west. You don't see anyone jumping to shit all over deceased pilots in recent crashes with similarly unknown information.
Illustrious-Run3591@reddit
One of the pilots intentionally turned off the engines at the most critical point of flight (take off) and then whoever it was lied on the CVR and hid the fact so we don't know who it was. There is no other explanation.
DisjointedHuntsville@reddit
What a despicable human being you need to be in addition to being so confidently wrong.
Show me a single conclusive data point released by the investigation. Conclusive. Not an interpretation of an indirect statement that supports what you just said.
Just goes to show that none of you people downvoting should be trusted with aviation assets given the fragility of your technical experience.
za419@reddit
To be perfectly honest the preliminary report is fairly conclusive. Not to the degree required for aviation authorities, obviously, but for laymen like you and me, I think we can fairly conclusively say that the switches were physically toggled off.
Kinda weird that you're so vehemently against that concept.
Illustrious-Run3591@reddit
? Everything I said is public knowledge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdwJ4ym_fzQ
railker@reddit
Never said anything about official hypothesis, as investigators don't present those. They assign Probable Cause with the conclusion of the investigation and final report.
Arguably wrong about Western crashes, look at the Jazz CRJ crash in LaGuardia, theories are running rampant equally about how the pilots sacrificed themselves and made no control inputs to make sure they killed themselves to save the passengers (despite having no CVR transcript or FDR data), and simultaneously statements they did nothing where they should have heard the truck being cleared across the runway and were negligent in not doing a go-around earlier (again, no CVR transcript to support ANY indication of what happened or was spoken in that cockpit). The Preliminary report doesn't even exist yet.
Similar assumptions were made all over the place with the DCA crash between the CRJ and the Blackhawk helicopter, the Delta flight that flipped on the runway in Canada (Man, the CRJ is having a bad time of it these past couple years) and how the pilots messed up the landing. Reports of a hard landing being the culprit for a landing gear failure of a Canadian airline in St. Maarten when it later came out the landing wasn't hard at all.
These presumptions are not as unique as you think.
DisjointedHuntsville@reddit
Okay, so you realize you are presenting your hypothesis as fact, do you not?
Easy way to settle this: Either you
My point is you are in camp (1) and are slandering deceased pilots when no official evidence or claim points that way.
railker@reddit
A hypothesis is by definition not fact.
Also by definition, slander would have to be provably false. Also it would be libel in the written form, slander is spoken.
But nice try slinging mud. At the end of the day I agree with you, so sit the fuck down a little bit. There is a line crossed with people taking these hypothesis as fact while we're missing the evidence we need to be quite so sure. But thankfully most of us live in free countries where we can say whatever we want, as nobody on the face of this planet is relying on anyone on Reddit for factual information that would influence the outcome of the actual investigation.
Every single one of us, including you, are speculating.
fwankfwort_turd@reddit
J. Jonah Jameson approves of this definition.
DisjointedHuntsville@reddit
"Slandering" is a verb and is used correctly above.
Thank you for confirming you know nothing and are speculating. For the record, me saying you know nothing isn't speculation since those are the available facts.
Pushing the narrative that pilots killed themselves and all souls on board is a very serious statement requiring a high burden of proof. Everyone on this thread who says this is downvoted to oblivion so the double standards are clearly visible.
Stop pretending like you have an objective viewpoint here since the starting point for your position starts with assuming the unknown and doubling down.
The discourse in aviation communities around this topic has been disappointing to say the least.
aviation-ModTeam@reddit
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Ficsit-Incorporated@reddit
What extraordinary evidence are you referring to? I understand if you can’t say but that’s also a big claim to reference without something factual to point to.
goodcleanchristianfu@reddit
I think you may need to take a second look at the comment you’re replying to, they are not suggesting that they know any such evidence to exist.
Ficsit-Incorporated@reddit
Yes, I misread the comment. My bad. I thought they were referring to evidence they knew to exist, not referring to a hypothetical piece of evidence.
lyricaldorian@reddit
It's not hypothetical evidence. It's evidence
Charlie3PO@reddit
They aren't referring to anything specific, they are just posing a hypothetical scenario which could warrant a change in understanding of the event. This is the current understanding which all evidence points to, but we will keep an open mind if new, credible evidence were to emerge which goes against the current understanding. Basically, they are just keeping an open mind to the issue.
Tricky_Big_8774@reddit
The reading comprehension kind of evidence
GlobalServiced@reddit
Because it’s extraordinarily evident that it was a murder-suicide from the flight deck using the fuel cutoff switches. There’s a reason that the reports haven’t been blasted all over the news.
octane83@reddit
And the answer to your question is a hard no.
NickTator57@reddit
The answer will not please alot of people. The answers if released will be challenged and litigated for a long time and paint a bad picture for the government.
They could pull a china and just not release the final report for "national security" concerns.
ScienceMechEng_Lover@reddit
It's not "a lot of people", it's just the pilots' union. Pretty much everyone else wouldn't give two shits about it being a murder-suicide instead of something being wrong with the plane.
streetmagix@reddit
You should check out the Indian Version of this subreddit (or articles about this incident on Indian subreddits) then
Many people are not accepting that an Indian Pilot committed murder-suicide and are certain that Boeing and all of the governments involved are covering up a huge technical issue.
Exact_Package_7264@reddit
as someone who's been active on the indian aviation subreddit, i'm not sure what planet you're living on. the consensus in the sub is to wait for the final investigation report to be released to talk definitively about the accident. not sure why you'd have a problem with that, it seems rather reasonable to me.
streetmagix@reddit
All of the top posts about this incident are conspiracy theories or facts that do not apply to the 787 (or aviation in general). Any mention of mental health is downvoted. Any mention that it wasn't a fault with Boeing is downvoted.
Exact_Package_7264@reddit
not sure if you're blind but that just isn't true lmao. in the first few weeks before the preliminary report, yeah, but you're quite stupid to not expect speculation based on boeing's poor safety record
streetmagix@reddit
No? They are still posting conspiracy theories (last one was lats month, complaining that a fake whistleblower group was being ignored by everyone).
Just like them, you fail to believe that an Indian pilot could do such a thing. Unfortunately it's the latest in a line of murder-suicide by pilots.
mr_bots@reddit
What answers are they looking for? One of the pilots shut the fuel off to both engines immediately after takeoff causing 260 people to die.
SIIP00@reddit
I'm pretty sure that's the answer they're looking for since it probably hasn't been confirmed by Indian authorities.
Caramel-Secure@reddit
Wrong accident.
mr_bots@reddit
Air India 171 is definitely the first crash of a 787 that was caused by the fuel getting cut to both engines immediately after takeoff.
Caramel-Secure@reddit
I spent half my time reading a comment on Jeju. Opps.
64bittechie@reddit
The preliminary report paints sufficiently conclusive picture. The final report will have conclusions and interpretation of the data. I don’t think the families or the people are ready to believe that this was a deliberate act. Releasing the raw data will do nothing except raise 1000s of nonsensical questions.
DisjointedHuntsville@reddit
This incident is a litmus test. The Aviation community in the west seem routinely inclined to conclude murder-suicide for pilots outside western nations even when a full report isn't released, no data points support any conclusion etc.
And before anyone here suggests a partial (indirect) quote of cockpit audio with zero context in a three page report is conclusive evidence beyond a shred of doubt. . . I hope those standards apply to you and your loved ones.
aviation-ModTeam@reddit
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Prestigious_Fox_3105@reddit
After the recent cases of Air india flying an a320 8 times without the airworthiness certificate Air india making more number of emergency landings Sending wrong aircrafts Their operations are literally full of lapses .After hearing all this , it isn't difficult to deduce what could have happened.
HeatTiny7041@reddit
What answers are they seeking short of the ones provided for the cause of the crash?
JKKIDD231@reddit (OP)
Nearly ten months after the tragic Air India AI171 crash, bereaved families have written a letter and urged PM Modi to release the vital black box data.
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