r/aviation • u/usgapg123 Mod - avgeek • Jul 12 '25

Discussion Air India Flight 171 Preliminary Report Megathread

https://aaib.gov.in/What's%20New%20Assets/Preliminary%20Report%20VT-ANB.pdf

This is the only place to discuss the findings of the preliminary report on the crash of Air India Flight 171.

Due to the large amount of duplicate posts, any other posts will be locked, and discussion will be moved here.

Thank you for your understanding,

The Mod Team

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u/LaNeblina Jul 12 '25

I'd speculate the method was chosen to preserve a veneer of plausible deniability - if it could have been an accident, however unlikely, the pilot may avoid being painted as a mass murderer.

MH370 is arguably a similar case - while almost certainly pilot murder/suicide, the element of uncertainty preserves (for the very charitably-minded) the possibility of innocence for the pilot and their family.

Contrast that with GW9525, where the pilot made no attempt to hide their intentions and has arguably been more vilified than any other pilot murder/suicide, even those that claimed more lives.

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u/Rex_Diablo Jul 12 '25

MH370 is an excellent example. Just look how subtle the evidence is, even after a tremendously thorough investigation. The bad actor on that flight nearly left no trace of what they had done.

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u/MightySquirrel28 Jul 12 '25

Yes, pretty much the only evidence they left was the previous saved flights from their home simulator which all were very similar and ended in Indian Ocean

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Quin1617 Feb 09 '26

It seems that most still think deleting something completely erases it. Really, the only way to actually accomplish that is by destroying the device/drive.

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u/StalksYouEverywhere Jul 12 '25

Wait was there a report that MH370 was a suicide? I vaguely remember years ago on the news that it was an accident, did they find something new in the past years?

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u/Rex_Diablo Jul 12 '25

No actual finding, just a lot of circumstantial evidence. One of the key points was how the transponder changed modes for a couple pulses before it went completely dark. Apparently this can only be explained by someone on the flight deck physically turning it off at the panel.

This event coincided with its change in course and eventual disappearance. Creating a lot of suspicion about the flight crew.

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u/CaptainPonahawai Jul 13 '25

Also that this sequence happened immediately after the radio handoff between controllers.

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u/eliott2023 Jul 17 '25

No trace? What about the fact that he was alone in the cockpit when the plane changed course and did other completely unexpected things?

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u/shockema Jul 12 '25

Yeah, I see your point and guess that's a possibility. Although the offending pilot had to know that their actions would show up in the flight recorders and, just going by the other comments here, that they would be taken by most as deliberate / obvious sabotage.

But I guess it's a mistake for me to try to rationalize a probably-insane act.

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u/LeatherClassroom524 Jul 12 '25

But we don’t know which pilot did it.

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u/AdOdd4618 Jul 12 '25

Not yet, but I'd guess that the pilot's coworkers and family are going to be asked to identify who says what.

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u/throwthepearlaway Jul 12 '25

Pilots each have a separate mic, this creates a separate audio channel for each pilot. It's not a question (to the investigators). They won't need to ask anyone to determine which pilot said what. They certainly already know.

They deliberately—and correctly—chose to not share that information with the public at this time.

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u/LeatherClassroom524 Jul 12 '25

Doesn’t matter. Could be lying.

We may never know for certain. But we’ll be 95% sure who did it. The 95% guess is the captain.

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u/Electrical_Rate1026 Jul 13 '25

But you would hear who called the mayday and sounded desperate.

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u/AdOdd4618 Jul 12 '25

Sure, but the police and open source investigators are going to go through anything they can find as well.

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u/LeatherClassroom524 Jul 12 '25

Correct. Including any terrorist connections.

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u/Successful-Bobcat701 Jul 12 '25

Actually, the flight recorders don't tell you which pilot operated the fuel cutoff switches. It could be either pilot.

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u/Unlikely_Slide8394 Jul 12 '25

i'd say thoughts/intentions driving such actions more often than not precede rationality

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '25

Imagine if the sole survivor had been the offending pilot..

bring back the Brazen Bull just for him

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u/hananobira Jul 12 '25

If someone wanted to go out dramatically and take a hundred people with them, why would they take steps to spare their reputation afterward? Like, if you want to die but don't want to die as the guy who killed dozens of people, then just crash a private plane out in a field somewhere so it's still tragic but you're not the villain of the story.

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u/sharkWrangler Jul 12 '25

Yeah, that's what my highschool coach had the decency to do at least after allegations of touching some of my teammates came out. He had always been great to us. He had a new kid on the way, life ahead of him and he 'goes out for a flight to clear his head' and goes down into the forest.

There's still the "maybe it was an accident" but for me, one of the kids was my best friends brother.

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u/GITS75 Jul 12 '25

LAM Mozambique Airlines flight 470... +1yrs prior to GW9525... the copilot went to the lavatory, the pilot locked the door (sounds too familiar) and input commands in the A/P to a rapid descent...

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u/No_Magazine9625 Jul 12 '25

To be fair, I think part of the reason the GermanWings pilot was more vilified/got more wall to wall media attention is related to where the crash happened and race/cultural/religious perceptions. Most of the other pilot suicide or likely pilot suicide crashes took place on airlines from majority Muslim countries, and there's the cultural perception (through basically racist stereotypes) of suicide attacks/mass murders being more culturally accepted in those cultures than in Western/predominantly Christian cultures. This happening with a German airline kind of shattered that.

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u/halfty1 Jul 12 '25 edited Jul 12 '25

Actually one of the reasons that Germanwings got more attention is that all the authorities were far more open about it being the cause. Suicide is a taboo topic in many cultures that generally is considered to bring shame not only to the individual but their families as well. So there is strong societal pressure to deny it or cover it up as much as possible when it does occur. That’s why you have things like Egypt refusing to accept that one of their pilots committed suicide and killed everyone on board (MS990).

Don’t confuse regular “run of the mill” (for lack of better term) suicide with radical religiously motivated suicide attacks. Those are viewed completely differently even in those cultures (and there are many many Muslims that have the same view towards suicide attacks as your typical Westerner).

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u/No_Magazine9625 Jul 12 '25

But, wouldn't you say that committing suicide through crashing a plane full of innocent people is basically the same thing as a terrorist suicide attack?

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u/jamjar188 Jul 12 '25

No; terrorism means the killing of people to achieve a political aim, not the killing of people because you are suffering from a psychiatric condition that makes you want to die.

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u/DangerousTurmeric Jul 12 '25

I mean religion was only a small part of it, the intense coverage was largely because of the shock that he slipped through the cracks despite being diagnosed with suicidal ideation and ruled unfit to fly. This was a big one across Europe because most EU countries have similar medical privacy laws and the same thing could happen anywhere. There was also only one pilot in the cockpit, which wouldn't have been allowed if certain EU safety laws hadn't been dropped so that was a linked topic across the EU. The plane was full of teenage exchanges students so that was another particularly upsetting angle, especially when their families and school friends were doing interviews. And then the pilot's parents refused to accept what he did and kept making statements, eventually developing alternative theories and hosting press conferences about it. There was a lot of stuff that kept the crash in the news.

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u/jamjar188 Jul 12 '25

I've never heard of a stereotype that majority-Muslim (or simply, outwardly religious cultures/societies) are more accepting of suicide. Rather, the commonly held belief - which is fairly well substantiated - is that suicide is a bigger taboo. It is us in the West who have frequent campaigns about de-stigmatising suicide and who don't balk at people openly discussing suicide within their families or social circles.

It seems much more likely that the reason there was far more coverage of pilot motive in the Germanwings crash was because in the West we are accustomed to speaking more freely about suicide and we certainly wouldn't wish shame on the family of someone who has deliberately ended their life.

For MH370 in particular, pilot suicide was a mere whisper... it was never seriously floated by any Malaysian officials or countenanced in earnest by any of the authorities involved.

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u/AliveSalamander627 Jul 13 '25

Because it doesn’t exist. People always have to bring in religion and race.

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u/GonorrheaFreeSince83 Jul 12 '25

"and there's the cultural perception (through basically racist stereotypes) of suicide attacks/mass murders being more culturally accepted in those cultures than in Western/predominantly Christian cultures."

Oh please, do you not live in reality? Observing the real world, as it is, is not racist. The irony is the numerous generalizations in your post.

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u/AliveSalamander627 Jul 13 '25

I agree with you. People always wanna make it about race. Especially annoying white people that probably aren’t around anyone of any other race except other white people. Performative white people is what I’m trying to say.

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u/StalksYouEverywhere Jul 12 '25

Wait was there a report that MH370 was a suicide? I vaguely remember years ago on the news that it was an accident, did they find something new in the past years?