WTF_! 51 Air India Safety Fails EXPOSED

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Air India is concerned. India's aviation watchdog found fifty one
safety lapses at Air India in its July audit, including
lack of adequate training for some pilot's, unapproved simulators and
a poor rostring system. According to the reports the annual audit.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
After decades of being regarded as a floundering drain on
the Indian taxpayer with a reputation for shabby services and
disheveled aircraft, a corporate takeover pledged to turn Air India
into a world class global airline with an Indian heart
that would outgrow all its domestic and international competitors. Yet

(00:43):
after tragedy struck on twelve June, the airline is instead
facing critical questions about its ability to operate safely, throwing
its long term ambitions into jeopardy. Well, that's Air India's
backstory in a nutshell. According to the God, I.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Feel past word.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Hello and welcome to true crime rocket Science, the most
authentic voice in true crime. We have given them many warnings.
Have a look at that headline. In the weeks after
the crash, Air India's face growing scrutiny after the attention
has turned to its own recent alleged checkered safety record.
Last week, the Indian government began holding direct meetings with

(01:40):
senior Air India management, calling for better oversight on safety
and engineering. According to the article, it came as India's
aviation watchdog issued for show cause notices to the airline
just last week, citing twenty nine safety related violations over
the past here. These beaches included lapses in CREWE duty norms,

(02:03):
fatigue management and training oversight. They were based on disclosures
made by the airline itself. Not to put too fine
a point in it, but the safety violations don't have
so much to do with the aircraft or to do
with technical or mechanical aspects, but human aspects. Look at
those words and we really want to circle them and

(02:26):
blow them up. Fatigue management, training oversight, CREWE duty norms.
Where or where in all of that is glitch monitoring
or bug fixing? I remember one of the first responses
to this disaster was to say that both pilots had
been well rested. Well, what do you think about that? Now?

(02:46):
What do you think they especially the captain would say, well,
before we get to that, if you haven't subscribed to
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please do hit the thanks button and let's get started. So,

(03:08):
going back to the Guardian quote, despite repeated warnings and
earlier enforcement measures, systemic problems in compliance monitoring, crew scheduling
and training oversight remain unresolved. Stated one notice, I think
the words that really stand out to me there are
systemic problems. The Aviation Watchdog warned the airline that continued

(03:31):
non compliance could leave them facing heavy financial penalties or
even the removal of senior executives. It also emerged that
in the days after Air India one seventy one crashed,
more than one hundred Air India pilots went on medical leave,
leading to questions of the company's handling of the welfare

(03:51):
and morale of its pilots. Please put up your hands.
Those of you out there who feel that this is
a non issue, feel that no, no, no, no, we
should plan boeing and all of this is due to
mechanical errors, Please put up your hand. If you one
of those people campaigning on that score, so are you
still saying that the crash had nothing to do with

(04:14):
the welfare of the pilots, nothing to do with the
morale of its pilots. One senior Indian government official with
direct knowledge of the notices told Reuters the administration was
concerned that quote Air India is taking things for granted,
adding we have given them many warnings. Air India acknowledged

(04:34):
receipt of the notices. We remain committed to the safety
of our crew and passengers, they said in a statement.
So all of this really is Air India's recent history, right,
while the formative history is also important, and just as
the childhood, upbringing and youth of a person is important
to their identity, well in true crime, to a criminal's

(04:55):
true identity, while the formative period of a company is
also so important, how much do you know about that? Well,
As it turns out, Air India has plenty of issues
in who it used to be and what it was
and in a sense still trying to become. Now, have
a look at this section from the same article, subtitled
an absolute shambles. In late twenty twenty one, when one

(05:18):
of India's largest CONGLOMERATESY Tartar Group, which founded the airline
back in nineteen thirty two, agreed to pay about two
billion dollars to buy back Air India from the government
the while they pledged to restore it to their former glory.
That was just four years ago, and obviously COVID occurred
in that intervening period. For decades, the legacy Indian Airline

(05:41):
had languished under state ownership. Look at those words we're
talking about systemic problems. Will languished under state ownership for years,
and they were overturning years of neglect and underfunding. Was
seen as a gogantuan task. What it would be, wouldn't it.
At the time of the time take over, Its newly
appointed CEO, Campbell Wilson said, the airline was in an

(06:05):
absolute shambles, but Tata immediately began to make major moves
to invest in to modernize and expand India's fleet. So, really,
what you're talking about is a whole bunch of new aircraft,
And what are you going to train new pilots or
are you going to use the same staff and just
spread them thinly across all of these planes? Billions of

(06:26):
dollars worth of new planes were ordered, and it became
a multimillion dollar refit of some of its older planes.
A merger was also announced with an emerging successful airline, Vistara.
So its corporate journey has been a long, hard slog,
and only recently as the airline shown signs a couple
of signs that its losses were narrowing. Now, since I've

(06:46):
got a degree in economics, I know something about the subject,
but you don't need a degree to understand the company
was struggling a lot financially. And guess are the corporate
heads were trying to solve the issues causing the goose
to be unprofitable by cutting corners. And it appears possibly
even with the pilots. I think the bottom line here

(07:07):
is stress. Financial stress. Do you think that fed into
the employees of this company?

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Will?

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Who were the employees the pilots? Who are the employees
of an airline company? Pilots? And look at this headline
from the Financial Times Singapore Airlines hit by losses at
Air India. This came out in the last day or so.
Singaporean carrier's first caller net profit plunges almost sixty percent
and Singapore Airlines just as a stake in India. So

(07:36):
do you see because the company is under severe strain,
the pilots are under strain. That strain is made worse
by competitors who are doing better than they are, and
the competition in India is particularly rife. According to the
Financial Times, losses from associate companies, notably from Air India's
financial results were one hundred and twenty two million Singapore

(07:59):
dots for the three months to the end of June,
the first quarter of its financial year. Singapore Airlines acquired
a twenty five percent stake in Air India last year,
while Tata had bought Air India out of state ownership
in twenty twenty two. But Tatar has struggled in its
efforts to revamp the flag carrier, which even before the

(08:20):
crash had been continually criticized by passengers for poor service
and aging craft. The article goes on to note that
the airline faces aggressive competition at home from the now
dominant carrier Indigo. Also, is it a coincidence that in
the same month Air India published its financial results for

(08:41):
the first time, Well, that's when this disaster happened in
the same month. One can imagine those at the head
of the table, thumping their fists and demanding that everyone
performed better, that everyone try harden. You know who likely
bore the brunt of this pressure, Well, wasn't it the pilots?
Since one hundred and twelve Air India pilots took sick

(09:03):
leave four days after the incident, not one hundred and
twelve pilots from various airlines, just this one airline. You
can also see why someone who would want to keep
this quiet. If the public knew the dire straits the
airline was in, it would likely complicate their efforts to
become profitable even more. Yet, even in spite of these
efforts at controlling the narrative, the Flight one seven to

(09:25):
one crash has already proved to be damaging in terms
of their reputation, in terms of I think the financial
aspect as well. The Guardian goes on to note, while
the cause of the crash in June is yet to
be confirmed, it has already proved damaging for Air India
and Tata, shaking consumer confidence and shining a light on
a series of operational challenges and mishaps involving their aircraft.

(09:49):
And I've always said, isn't this particular incident an important one.
It's important to use it to shine a light and
to perhaps deal with all of the problems. And it
seems I've gotten a lot of pushback where people say, no,
don't shine a light, don't think about it, don't talk
about it, wait till the final report comes out. If
you did wait till the final report came out, what

(10:11):
about all of these things that need to be sorted out,
all of these problems that need to be sorted out.
According to the article, over the past six months, Air
India received thirteen notices for multiple safety violations and incidents.
Recent incidents included a fire in the power unit of
an Airbus A three to one that had just landed
from Hong Kong to Delhi, a Kotchi Mumbai flight that

(10:34):
veered off the runway and suffered damage to an engine cover,
and a Deli Kolkata flight that was forced to aboret
takeoff at the last minute. And look at this paragraph.
Despite the pledged upgrades, customer complaints about the standard of
Air India aircraft, including disheveled and uncomfortable interiors, broken arm rests,

(10:54):
faulty entertainment systems, and frequent Delays on international flights have
also continued, sometimes with significant consequences. In March this year,
Air India flight one two six from Chicago to Delhi
that's a pretty long distance had to turn back off
to ten hours when eleven out of the plane's twelve

(11:14):
toilets became clogged. I mean when last week you on
a flight where a single toilet became clogged, let alone
eleven out of twelve. Meanwhile, in June last year, hundreds
of cabin crew working for Air India went on strike
over working conditions. The budget airline is also now under
investigation by the EU's Aviation Agency after reports it did

(11:37):
not change the engine parts of an Airbus A three
twenty in a timely manner. So do you see the
formative history is also important and in this case valid,
but equally it isn't the only area we need to investigate.
In the very recent history. What we find is simply
a pattern that shows disaster was all but inevitable. What

(11:58):
we see is what appears to be neglect or just
not knowing about a lot of problems, just as we
saw in the Rust incident and the Titan submersible. And
what do we always say on this channel. An accident
isn't an accident if it's an accident waiting to happen.
An accident waiting to happen is inevitable, and an accident
that's inevitable means it's predictable. And just as human beings

(12:22):
have backstories that matter, so do entities run by human beings.
In this case, an airline, which is a corporate entity
well in effect, Air India was trying to complete a
transition from a bloated, ineffective government into entity a goose
of the skies trying to change itself into a sleeker, fitter,
more effective and response of corporate kite, you know, a

(12:46):
corporate kite of the Air India space. Or the fact is,
like any person trying to graduate trying to change themselves,
some bad habits persist, some patterns and a particular lifestyle
can be hard to shake. Changing one's skin may be
easy if you're a chameleon, but to change who you
are is harder, much harder, and very often not even possible,

(13:07):
especially if those changes are fundamental. Oh when a finished
by quoting at the end of the Guardian article, Jatender
by grav, a former Air India executive. He said that
most major international airlines had faced similar periods of scrutiny,
and then he said the airline has a responsibility to
be open and transparent. Well are they? Many people have

(13:30):
commented on my coverage of Air India saying, stop speculating,
stop thinking about this case, wait for the final report
and let the experts handle this. I think it ought
to be clear by now that thinking about something like
this is better than not thinking about it. Talking about
something like this is better than not talking. Hoping and
relying on transparency is risky when issues often arise precisely

(13:55):
because of a lack of openness and transparency. In the end,
bringing things into the light openly and honestly serves the
greater good, and that includes your best interests, and we
ought to all have an interest in that. Do you agree. Well,
I'm not going to take it further than that. In
the next video, we're going to deal with Coburger's creepy
self assessment. We'll be looking at Brian Coburger, the Moscow,

(14:18):
Idaho mass keller, his backstory and how it revealed someone
very unexpected and not quite the person, not quite the
monster most people think he is. All right, thank you
for listening, and I'll see you guys next time.