“Bird ingestion, fuel…” President of Fed of India Pilots explains possible reasons of plane crash

ANI

Mumbai, June 13, 2025 (ANI): Captain C.S Randhawa (President, Federation of India Pilots) explains possible reasons of Air India passenger plane AI171 crash in Meghani near Ahmedabad Airport. Randhawa suggests that bird ingestion or fuel condensation could be the possible reasons.

Transcript

00:00Ahmedabad is known to have lot of bird activity.

00:03Could be bird ingestion is there and both engines are flamed out.

00:08Secondly, this aircraft has come from Delhi and it is flying at an altitude.

00:15So, the wings become cold and inside the wings the fuel tanks are there which causes fuel

00:26condensation. Now, when there is fuel condensation there are some water contaminants which get into

00:33the fuel. However, when refueling at Ahmedabad there is always the engineers, not the engineers,

00:42the engineer does a fuel check on the fuel bowser which is refueling the aircraft and a fuel sample

00:48is taken to check any water contaminants. But there could be some water contamination in the

00:56wing tanks. Now, it could be that once in 10 million chance that some water contamination

01:04which has gone into both engines which is very, very rare and both engines are flamed out.

01:11In case the engines were running, the third possibility is that since the gear has been found

01:18to be down. Though the captain must have realized that the gear is down, but after putting the autopilot

01:30on, he could have realized that the gear is still down. So, he may have given command of gear up.

01:36Now, the co-pilot by mistake has taken the flaps up. At that low height, if the flaps are taken up,

01:46the aircraft will sink and stall and it's a no, no retrievable situation. And we see the aircraft is

01:54coming down at about 800 to 1000 feet per minute and had impacted with a nose slightly up.

02:03It was carrying lot of fuel. So, where it impacted, the fuselage must have broken. And where the fuselage

02:11is broken when it impacted the building, the passenger sitting next to the window, he has dropped off the

02:19aircraft.

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