Decoding Air India 171 Crash Probe: Fuel Switches, Silence & Unanswered Questions In Our Defence S3|Ep 14

India’s worst aviation disaster in recent years. Air India Flight 171 crashed within a minute after takeoff -- killing 260 people. In this episode of In Our Defence, journalist and aviation enthusiast Sandeep Unnithan joins host Dev Goswami to unpack the preliminary probe report that has sparked a polarised debate on the cause of the crash: How did the fuel switches end up in the off position?

The two break down:

Why air crash investigations aren’t about blame, but prevention

What the AI 171 preliminary report reveals (and what it doesn’t)

How the fuel switches were turned off -- accident, error, or something else?

The intense public reaction -- is it okay to even suggest “pilot error”?

Whether India’s aviation investigators can resist the pressure

Will this become another unsolved mystery like MH370?

While we await the final report into the tragedy, tune in for the first impressions on a preliminary report that raises more questions than it answers.

Produced by Garvit Srivastava

Sound mixed by Aman Pal

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is India Today Podcasts. Welcome to season three of
Another Defense, the podcast that takes you inside the world
of conflict. I'm your host, Deve Goswami, and every week
I sit down with experts and retired officers from the Army,
Navy and Air Force to decode all things to do

(00:21):
with India security and explore what it truly means to serve.
Get ready for stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength. This
is in our Defense. Welcome to Another Defense. We are
back after a week. We had to take a short
break last week because of which the episode did not
come up come out in case you know, our regular

(00:42):
listeners and viewers are wondering, But that's okay. We're back
with the new episode and this week I'm going to
step outside the world of tanks, guns, and fighter jets
and aircraft carriers and talk about something not really in
the realm of defense, but something that comes sort of
as second nature to people who either cover the world
of defense or like me, are enthusiasts of the world

(01:04):
of defense. That's civil aviation. The last month or so
has been dominated by headlines of the crash of India
Flight one seven one just outside the end of the airport.
It took place a little over a month ago. The
preliminary report of the investigation by the India Ministry of
Civil Aviation the branch being in the Aircraft's Investigation in

(01:26):
an Accident Bureau, came out a few days ago and
since then that report has led to a very polarizing
debate in India and also in the aviation community because
of several questions. Let's say the report leaves unanswered to
decote the accident. To sort of help us understand what
the premium report says and what we should be taking

(01:48):
away from it. I'm going to have Sandian, who I'm
guessing shares my love for aviation, whether it's civil or defense,
on this episode. Hi, Hi, They've got to be back.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
And I do your love for aviation primarily because I
fly a lot, and so it's it. It is actually
a lot of you know, questions that I want answers
to as well as as a frequent flyer, and we
all want to know because you know, flying is now
literally second nature. Everyone who gets into an aircraft today,
I'm guessing, wants to know which aircraft type it is. Yes,

(02:20):
you know, more than any time in the past. That's
what we're here to talk about exactly.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, yeah, especially and also because the kind of the
kind of beat that you cover in the world of
journalism and defense. Like I said, it's very linked to
it because you know you you share similar kind of physics,
you share a similar kind of laws. Uh. Even the
sort of medical rating that pilots to have, the civil pilots,
it's almost near to what you would need to have

(02:48):
with their force pilots. So the world of aviation is
very well understood by why people like you who've been
covering this field for who've been covering defense for or
very long, including military aviation, and of course common man factor. Yes,
we fly so often, we fly every day, and we
keep hearing so often that flying is one of the
safest modes of transporting on Earth. It still is, by

(03:09):
the I'm not questioning that it is. But when a
crash like this happens, you boot and two second guess
you don't bootend to have questions. Uh. And let's be
very clear, this was a devastating crash. Yes, this was
among the world's worst air disasters. It was er India's
worst non terror linked crashes, the first ever complete loss

(03:30):
of the Wowing seven eight seven Dreamliner which was involved
in this in this accident, one of I think this
was perhaps the lowest altitude crash that has happened in
civil aviation. UH and the devastation of this crash could
be understood by the fact that one of the black boxes,
the devices that are supposed to survive crashes like this,
actually perished. Data from it was not readable, is what

(03:50):
the AI report says. It was only the black box
word in the front of the ACRA, which was they
were able to read and go out something. Before we
get to the report, before we talk about theories and
the counter theories and the debate around what's happened, I
have a couple of points around to begin with. One
something that just shook me when I was reading the report.

(04:12):
So the report does a very good job of establishing
the title of exactly what happened at the airport that
day from takeoff till crash. Some deep it's just ninety seconds, right,
That's less time it takes to cook Maggie.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yes, of course, that's how much time the pilots really
had to salvage what they did, and they tried. I'm
sure they tried. The must have been chaos in the cockpit.
And you know the other thing there was that the
dominant narrative suggests that everything was quiet and there must
have been a you know, the switches were turned off

(04:45):
by themselves. And however, whether there was a deliberate turning
off of the switches, of the fuel switches to the engines,
it was all silent, right. The report doesn't highlight the
fact that they must have been chaos in the cockpit.
It's not like your seat belts sign in your It's
not like your seatbelt alarm in your motor car, which

(05:08):
you know, beeps. It would have been you know, like
I was talking to one of the pilots and he said,
it would have been like a the valley in there.
They would have been alarms going off. It would have
been crazy. They would he mentioned something five or six
different types of alarms that would have gone off. And
which is why, like you mentioned, less than a minute
and a half is what the pilots had. In fact,

(05:28):
even shorter than that. When they discovered what was on,
it would have been less than forty seconds. Yes, right,
it's nothing. It's a blink of an eye, literally, and
the pilots. They saw the situation, what was going on,
and they tried to retrieve it right. I know there
are many questions how those switches and all that were
turned out, but the thing is that, you know, it

(05:49):
is very smooth. The takeoff is a smooth thing. You
have one pilot who's not flying, who's supervising the other
pilot who's flying, and then there's a set of instructions
that are given. There's as you rotate, which is when
the aircraft starts to climb take off the from the
ground and you actually pull the stick back. He notes

(06:10):
positive climb, and he says the pilot who's flying says
positive climb, and then he says gear up, and then
the gear goes up, and then the aircraft takes off right,
so you're about two hundred feet or so off the ground.
But in this case there was an emergency, yes, because
the gear was still down, which meant that this was
not a priority for them to get. They were trying

(06:33):
to fix whatever was going on in the cockpit at
that time. And of course there are those two lines
that have been plucked out and used in the report
which everyone's been trying to decipher of the last couple
of days, did you cut off? No, I didn't those
two lines, right, So this report, clearly they it actually
throws up more questions than it answers. Right, it's a

(06:56):
preliminary report, but it is a prillim report of the
kind that it almost needs another report to explain this one.
That and it is scary, not in the least because
there are so many of these aircraft actually still flying around.
We don't know when that final report is going to
come out, right, there is you are mandated to deliver

(07:17):
the preliminary report in the month. There's no thing for
the final report that's open ended. Yeah, it could happen.
It could even you know, take a month, a year.
Who knows.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, it is exactly why we are doing this episode.
And unlike our other episodes, I think on this episode
will end up posing questions more than actually answering them.
Because even we don't have an answer.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
I wish I knew the answers to it. We can
just that best. Absolutely, Like you said, they've raised a
lot of questions, right, and not speculate. I mean there
is a lot of speculation out there. Who did it?
Who did what was it? The pilot was it some
kind of fact, But I think we really need to
get a lot of answers to the questions that are
being raised, because you flying is not the exclusive preserve

(08:04):
it once was of a few citizens. You have India,
which is one of the world's largest civilization markets. In fact,
they're going to be like three hundred and fifty million
Indians airborne by the end of this decade. There's a
lot of Indians are going to be flying. So if
you're going to fly in an aircraft as commonly used
as the seventy eight seven, then you want to have

(08:24):
answers to this.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Yeah, so that's what we're going to Yeah, we'll do that,
but you know, before we do, before we dive into
the reporter and the theories and the questions that we have,
I actually want to sort of underlining for our lessoners
and viewers something I think people have been missing when
they discuss aviation accidents in the first place and aviation
probe reports in the first place. Is I think this misconception.

(08:46):
I don't think a lot of people have that, but
I do see a strand of that that aviation crash
probes are meant to sort of assign blame either to
a company or to a human being, or to a
spare part, or to the company giving that spare part
something like that. But in fact, and this is something
that is on second page of the aib Prilim report,

(09:07):
is that, as per the Annex seventeen of the Convention
on International Civil Aviation Organization, aviation accident probes are meant
to be done only for the purpose of prevention of
accidents and incidents and not to a portion blame or lability,
which I think is very important because when you have
people come with jumping to are they talking about human

(09:28):
are they talking about is Bowing's fault? It was er
India's fault in terms of maintenance, you have to understand
that the probe report at the Pilm River or at
the final level, they're not going to talk about whose
fault it was personally. They're just going to identify what
factors led to the accident and how can that be
prevented in the future. And for that I have two
very good examples that came from my research I think

(09:49):
would benefit our listeners and viewers, and then you can
give me your thoughts on this. One is the crash
of Air France Flight four four seven. This happened in
two thousand and nine. This plane, basically mysteries disappeared over
the ocean. It later turned out that what had happened
was one device stopped working, because of which there was
some faulty data that went to the cockpit that led

(10:12):
to the autopilot being turned off. The pilots then had
to manually fight the plane at a level at which
they've never been trained to do, and the pilots ultimately
ended up stalling the plane. The probe did say human
error was involved. However, the crucial bit was why did
that happen? Because they were not trained well enough, so
that led to a number of regulation changes in terms

(10:33):
of how pilots had trained. The second, the very interesting
one and relates very closely to what we are going
to be talking about, is an aircrash that took place
in the UK. This was in nineteen eighty nine. It
was a Bowing seventy seven of the British Midland Air Base.
It crashed soon after takeoff. Again, the pilots were planed.

(10:54):
In this case, the pilots actually sensed trouble with one
of the engines and they ended up shutting off the
wrong engine. That led to both the engines being turned
off and then let led to the crash. UH forty
seven people died in that crash. The pilots survived, and
in a BBC documentary, the captain of the of the
of the of the of the aircraft gave a very
interesting quote that I think is very relevant to to

(11:16):
what we're going to be discussing and the you know,
after the probe, the pilots were blamed for it. They
were actually dismissed from service, and the captain of the
flight gave a very interesting quote to BBC which I
found very relevant to what I was just talking about,
where he said, we, as in the pilots, were the
easy option, the cheap option if you wish we made
a mistake. We both made mistakes, but the question we
would like answered is why we made those mistakes. And

(11:38):
one of the reasons for that crash actually was that
they were operating a newer variant of the Boeing and
on the older variant the indicators that they saw integrated
an issue with the other engine, and that's basically how
the group of happened. So, going back to the earlier point,
how important on the view thing is that we keep
this in mind before we discuss this and before people
even you know, read this report and discuss the topic
in the first place.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Right, it's really important they went, you know, but you know,
bear in mind that no one accident is exactly the
same same as the other accident, unless there is some
catastrophic you know, incident in that particular fly by virus system,
as we've seen with Boeing in the past, with the
two very famous Boeing seven three seven Max crashes a

(12:20):
couple of years back, which were both you know, traced
down to the same identical fault, which yes, the mks
and that that is something that the company did not
alert the pilots about and this led to two near
identical crashes. Now, apart from that, I think a lot
of these crashes are different and it happens. It is tragic.

(12:41):
Air travel is very safe, but unfortunately air crashes happen
in the at the frequency that they do. It's really unfortunate.
It's for us to draw those lessons, you know, out
of those crashes like you just mentioned, and it could
be a variety of factors. It could be pilot terror,
it could be some technical glitch because there have been

(13:02):
some very sensational instances of whistle blowers mentioning that there
were technical design deffects in the fact that a particular
aircraft manufacturer was cutting corners in this desperate race that
they were in with the dominant player, which is the
Boeing versus a bus kind of contest. Right, So it

(13:24):
is a complicated, you know, scenario. But the fact is
that in recent times what we had drawn our attention
to is the fact that it is literally one aircraft
manufacturer that has been in the line of fire. It's
not the other one. It's very strange that all of
those sensational crashes have been to do with one particular

(13:46):
aircraft manufacturer. So there's that line from James Bond that
once it happenstance two is coincidence and three his enemy actions. Right,
So the points to something else that could be at
play over here. And possibly this is something that we
might find with the Air India crash as well, that
there could be things that have not been kept in

(14:07):
the report, which are left out of the report, which
could finally emerge in the final report as and when
that happens. But you know, like I said that this
preliminary report just raises too many questions. It's just raiserst
throws up more questions. It's leading to so much of speculation.
There's everyone's divided down the middle. Literally who depends on

(14:27):
who you ask and in which country they are and
which geography they are, and you know what their stakes
in this whole thing are. There are people who are
blaming the pilots. There are there's one lobby that's you know,
blaming the aircraft manufacturers. There are you know, various other
issues being attributed to this, whether it is the maintenance
or the fuel and all that. But we know that
something catastrophic did happen in that cockpit. Dave. You know,

(14:51):
this is something that we really need to find answers
to because, like I said, I mean, there are over
a thousand Dreamliners that are flying in the air one
one hundred of them flying. This is an aircraft type
that India is heavily committed to. We have over one
hundred of them flying, we're planning to buy more of them.
So if there is actually a technical issue with them,

(15:14):
if there is a software glitch, then we don't need
to know what caused that. And whether this is going
to be soft the software glitch, if there is a
remedy to this, if there is a patch, and this
is what has happened in recent crashes, like you know,
it all began with a story of the pilots. Oh,
the pilot's kind of you know, they couldn't recover the thing,

(15:34):
and it was it just went down into a steep dive,
and this is what happened. And then it emerges that
it's the NCAS that is to blame. Man that very
famous documentary that blew the whistle on this, the twenty
twenty two Netflix documentary. So, I mean, this is the
jury is really out on this, but we really need
to hear what the jury has to say, you know,

(15:55):
sooner rather than later.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah, they actually proving the crash, that is right thee
So let's talk about the report. It came out very
mysteriously post midnight in their time. We'll talk about that
a bit later on this episode because I have some
real good questions over there as well. But yeah, it
came out like post midnight, Aroundles one in the morning
early morning, uh, and fifteen page report quite comprehensive for

(16:19):
a premium reportupreim report usually had about three four pieces long.
But then you also have to keep in mind this
flight was a very long. It was like ninety seconds
strom take off to crash, so less than two minutes
from the taxi from the parking way to the crash site. Uh.
And because it was not very long, they've recovered all
the daytime. In fact, they have data for around six

(16:39):
previous flights of this particular jet, including the incident in question. UH.
And the report established. The report actually is fairly plain.
More all the pieces. It just established the history of
the of the airline, sorry, the air the plane in
question question, A very basic history of the pilots, the
two pilots who are flying the pile. The first officer
was the pilot flying on this leg, and the captain

(17:02):
of the flight was the pilot monitoring basically the first
The first officer was the guy holding the up basically
to take off, and the captain was sort of monitoring
all the instruments and helping the first officer. Pretty straightforward flight,
like you said at the beginning of this episode, takes
off and then something happens within around a minute after takeoff. UH.
And that's that that those two paras actually are the

(17:24):
crux of this report, and this report has actually stablished
the cause of crash. The cause is very simple. The
engine shut off. Why because the.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Fourth engines shut because there was no fuel that was.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Now we don't know why. Yeah, the fuel wasn't going.
We know the switches turned off and around a few
seconds later they were sort of turned on, but by
then it was too late something. When you read this report,
I'm not sure when you read it. I read it
at that night because I was sort of like you,
tossing in my bed and I got some alerts and
I was like, oh, I want to read this right now.
So I read it bang in the middle of the night.

(17:54):
When you read it for the first time, your initial
thoughts and impressions beneath of this report.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
When I read it, I mean, of course, like you mentioned,
it's a fairly andodyne report. But when you come to
the meat of it, which is what really went wrong.
What they point at that the conversation and the fact
that the fuel was cut off to the engines. And
when I read it, I said, oh my god, this
is what happened. This is how the twin engine flame out.
It's the rarest of rare occurrences. It's like a ultra

(18:20):
blackstone event. If there's anything like that, it's something that
pilots never trained for exactly, you know. And at this height,
there's no height, it's just.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
Like you can't take.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
It's the top of a building. Literally, that's how high
they were, and and it points to a catastrophe. We
all knew that. In fact, on the day of the
crash itself, we had the Indiana Today Southern Bureau chief
is a commercial pilot who wrote that his assessment of
what he saw, which he described that there was, you know,

(18:52):
an emergency because his eyes went straight off to the
landing gear. The fact that the landing gear hadn't retracted
signified there was something in the pit that was wrong,
that the pilots were trying to fix that problem, and
they hadn't lifted the you know, the the landing gear.
And this was these were my thoughts as well, and

(19:14):
my attention went to that twenty eighteen circular that went
out to a whole lot of Boeing aircraft seven thirty seven,
which shares an identical switch pattern, which said that there
had been some issue with the switches or the fuel
switches and The other, of course, was the fact that
it was one second. The switches were turned off in
one within one second, within one second. So I'm like,

(19:35):
I'm raising questions like how did that happen? So is
the cockpit voice recorder is it monitoring the physical movement
of the switches or is it monitoring the wolf cut off?
You know, it could possibly not be the physical movement
of the switches, right, it's monitoring the signal perhaps the signals. Yeah,
you know, so the signal has been cut off suddenly

(19:55):
to the uh you know, the wolves are turned off
and then theilot's kind of the switches are found in
their run position, which means they tried an emergency relight.
So whatever happened, both pilots were trying to do it together, right,
So there is this needless speculation I know of pilots
or one pilot turned it off and the other one
turned to him and it said, it's it is possibly

(20:18):
the most most you know, normal thing to do when
you when you have someone flying. He's focused on it,
and he looks at it. It says, there's no fure it
off it. Yeah, exactly, so he said, did he said
right into anything? So this whole bizarre logic. Also, they
were pilots, we said, that's been put out. If you've
seen in the previous uh, there have been several cases

(20:40):
of pilots willfully crashing airlines aircraft. There have been cases
of CFP where they've literally driven their aircraft into the
mountain side. The pilot is in control of the aircraft, right,
he is actually physically flying it. He's either flying it
by himself or he's locked the other pilot out and
he's flying it himself. This is the speculation which emits

(21:04):
three seven years. Well, that's one reason that it's just
vanished the way it did. But in this case, there
is no such reason to believe that, you know, one
pilot would just switch off the fuel gauges as it
was taking off. Why would you do that, you know,
it doesn't stand to reason. So whatever happened, it happened
very quickly. There was some fuel cut off, a sudden

(21:27):
catastrophic fuel cut off to the engines, just at a
time when they needed that fuels the most. When they're
you know, literally thrusting up, pulling this two hundred ton
aircraft up into the air, and that's when suddenly it
goes silent. So was that a silent command? Suddenly? Was
there a massive software failure the fedeck which controls the aircraft,

(21:50):
which is the nerve center of the aircraft, which is
the fly by wire thing, did that suddenly give a
command to shut it off? You know, these are the
quind of questions that you know, went through my mind
when I said that, I mean, one second doesn't stand
to reason, And everybody, of course went on. So, like
I said, everyone who's read it has a theory. You know,
someone's pushing this pilot suicide thing, and of course pilots

(22:13):
are justifiably I agree with that point of view. But
there is another very credible set of people who looking
at it and saying, look, this kind of a catastrophe
could only be triggered off by a software glitch, and
there have been there has been a precedent to this.
I did check. There was an incident somewhere in twenty
nineteen when an All Nippon Airlines seven eight seven landed

(22:37):
on the ground. I think it was in Japan, and
it certainly there was a fuel cutoff to both engines.
This was in twenty nineteen or so. It happened inexplicably,
and fortunately it happened just after the aircraft had landed,
so there was no danger right now. As you know, they've,
like anyone else, the most important parts of flying the

(22:58):
aircraft or the takeoff and the landing the most crucial parts. Literally,
the rest of it is just it's a cruise, it's autopilot.
But here, fortunately with this A and A flight, it
happened after it had landed, so there was no crisis there.
But I want to know what kind of inquiry went
into that incident and what are the kind of lessons

(23:18):
that came out from that, because again, this twenty eighteen
alert that went out, which was not mandatory, I didn't
understand that very weird. Actually, yeah, I thought that phrasing
of that thing. I mean, is it something that they
did because they didn't want to cost too much alarm
because you know, they've, let's face it, there's too much
at stake over here, right this particular aircraft. It's just

(23:41):
one aircraft. But what's that stake over here is literally
it is the United States of America, one of the
largest aviation companies in the history of humanity, which is
going which is not just civil aircraft but it's a
huge military thing as well. It's got a big military
line as well. We are customers of both civil and military.

(24:03):
We are buying Boeing made helicopter gunships, we have Boeing
made long range maritime petrol aircraft, and we have Dreamliners
on order, both in service and in order. The stakes
in this are enormous, and I think that is one
reason why I think we need answers and we need
those reports to come out really quickly because this is otherwise,
this is needless speculation. It will go on, you know everyone,

(24:26):
there will be a billion opinions on this report, and
it's try. You know, a lot of it comes from
genuine fear. And you know, because flying is an everyday
thing now you fly in the way today that at
one point your parents took trains for instance. You know,

(24:47):
the aircraft is the is the passenger train of the
twenty first century. And when such questions have been raised
on a particular advanced aircraft, you've not got answers to it.
People are frightened, right. I flew in a in A
seven eight seven just a few days after the crash,

(25:07):
and I remember the interior of the aircraft. It was
an Air India seven eight seven flying to Bombay. There
was utter silence. It was the kind of silence that
I had never seen before. I think it was passengers
genuinely afraid. And you know, you normally have that bustle
in an aircraft, you have that thing, you have people shouting.

(25:30):
Here it was the silence. Maybe I imagined it, maybe
it was just too It was just forty eight hours
after this crash, but there was a sense of fear.
I could see. There was no one laughing, there was
no joy, there was nothing. People are generally afraid, but
most of them are flying because they had no option, right.
So that is where we are with this crash, and

(25:51):
I think that's why we need answers. And I'm sure
the government is aware of this. And while they put
out the report of fairly detailed one, raising more questions
than it has answered them, I think we owe it
to all of those airline passengers, especially those passengers who
met such an untimely death. I mean, there were so

(26:13):
many families that were literally torn apart. I mean two
hundred plus families that died. Pilots who've died, I mean
very experienced pilot six thousand hours two thousand hours and
all of that. But the big thing is that what
everyone wants to know is that is it safe to
fly now? You know, those are the kind of questions

(26:33):
and this is raised.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yeah, and also what a horrific way to die. You know,
it took days for the doctors and am the bad
to identify victims by DNA. DNA that was the state
of the remains of the bodies so badly charged that
you know, it took days for in the final told
to arrive. I remember because there was a quote by
one of the things in the head of the hospital,

(26:57):
the Civil Hospital hospital there that he's head that it's
so bad that we can't give a toll right now.
And they actually had to down revise the toll because
at one point they said two seventy five and then
it turned out to be two sixty. That's how bad
the situation is.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Fifty terms of I guess it's like a bomb. I
mean that when.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
Fully loaded going to London. So when fully loaded and.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Fully it's like a like a fuelair explosive going off there. Yeah,
it's so tragic.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
And yet you have that lucky one one almost unscathed.
I mean some injuries, some critical injury, severe injuries, but
still unscared and is to walk.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
Out stranger than fiction at times, Yes, you just walked
out of the crash, but.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
The you know, to your not just to your point
of of what you said. But I do want to
be the devil's advocate over here and talk about why
should we not talk about palter or human terror? Because uh,
like I said at the beginning of this of this episode,
air crash probes are not about blame. They're about understanding

(27:59):
the factors that led to a crash. The error could
very well happen because of something that went wrong with
the airplane. Because see, yeah, like you said, it's ninety seconds,
you've just taken off, Suddenly you feel you've lost thrust.
You will take two seconds to realize and figure out
what the hell is going on. It's quite possible that
in that heightened state of a low heightened stead of stress,

(28:22):
you might end up doing the wrong thing. It's human
nature and that's how many your previous accidents happen. And
that's how I imagine if I'm driving a car at
a fairly high speed something comes in front of me,
it's quite possible instead of the break I'm accelerated in stress. Right,
mistakes can happen train for stuff like this. But that's
the whole point of investigations, right, find out that stress

(28:42):
point that led to that one mistake, so that that
stress point can never come again in the future. The
reason I asked the deepest because like you said, and
like we've discussed, there's a very sharp divide, which I
find very sad that you know, Oh my god, you
cannot even touch this topic. You cannot even bring up
the point of pilotter because hey, have you seen going
they've been so bad, Yes, they've been bad, but would

(29:03):
you say that just putting that hard red line. Oh,
you cannot even talk about the pilots. That's a bit
of a bit of a to we need to talk
about it.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
But you know, the fact is that the circumstantial evidence
in this is overwhelming. I mean, of course, there have
been cases where there have been there has been pilot
error or in several other cases, like I mentioned, there
have been pilots have willfully you know, crashed their aircraft
and that that is a taboo topic. Not not enough

(29:32):
attention is given to possibly because it's so rare. Pilot suicide.
It is spoken about in the past, but in this case,
the kind of catastrophic loss of uh you know, simultaneous
fuel cut off to two engines. I mean that suggests
some kind of a technical thing. I mean, I'm not
saying that that is the only reason we don't really know.

(29:54):
We will possibly know when we get that entire CVR
recording of all the events that preceded the conversation and
followed that conversation. So this was uh, it's a little
unfair actually to just pull out two lines from a
possible long set of uh you know, back and forth

(30:16):
between the pilots as this unfolded and led to that
may day signal, which meant that, you know, everything is lost.
But yeah, we must talk about it, but you know,
without trying to blame those pilots, because they're not there
to defend themselves. I mean, that's of course one thing
that we've heard. They're not there to defend themselves. But

(30:37):
possibly they've left something in the CVR for us to
know what really went wrong. Was it an accident, was
it uh, you know, sabotage, Was it a a hack?
Did somebody hack the software of the aircraft as it
is that even possible. You know, all options must be examined. Now,

(30:58):
this is the the defense got sponded in me. That's
speaking up that when you're looking at a heightened military
situation a month after ops in do, you're looking at
several you know, male actors who are in the fray
want to you know, pursue a range of options. Who

(31:19):
knows it could well have been a hack as well.
That should not be discounted, right, that can never be
ruled out. So I think every option must be considered
and finally what is the most plausible and which of
course the technical evidence will let tell you and conclusively,
so you will know what happened. And that needs to
come out sooner rather than later, because otherwise than the

(31:42):
speculation continues and other actors get into the you know,
into the theater, which is like I mentioned, this is
no ordinary air crash. It's coming at a time when
you're looking at trade negotiations between India and the United States.
It's you're looking at the reputation of a big company

(32:04):
that's here. You're looking at another big, big Indian corporation
that has bought this airline from the government. So there's
a lot I would say there's a lot of pressure
on various people to keep the truths from being revealed.
But that's the conspiracy theorist. But I mean to put

(32:26):
all of these doubts at rest, we need that report
to come out quickly so that all of this speculation
can be laid to rest. But like I said, the
pressure on this case is overwhelming because of the time
that this crash happened, the geopolitics that's unfolding. You have
the United States, which is on a rampage, and they

(32:49):
would not I mean, look to my mind, how would
the United States react to a crash report that points
at a technical fault of the company that made the
aircraft of the OEM right, they would be a considerable

(33:10):
uh uh barrage of messages from the White House or
from Capitol Hill. Right, all of that is coming into play,
and we've seen that in the past as well. There
has been overwhelming pressure, you know, on on airlines or
on whistle blowers, even because at times the truth is

(33:32):
very unpalatable and it and these are not ordinary companies.
These this is not an ordinary uh country. It is
the United States, It is Boeing. There are reputations that
are to be protected. So the weakest uh you know,
uh party in this whole thing is the pilot. You

(33:54):
can just blame everything on the pilot and it all
goes away. You don't investigate the software that flies the aircraft,
you don't investigate the fuel cutoff valves or the switches.
You just say that, oh, it was these two pilots,
or there was you know, you know how pilots are
in India. I'm just guessing what the kind of thing
would already be, you know, the speculation that would already

(34:17):
be out there, which it is. So the easiest thing
is to blame it on the pilots. And you know
that precludes any kind of detailed inquiry into the fed
egg or the software that flies the aircraft, whether they
were glitches, what happened in twenty eighteen, what happened in
twenty nineteen. Oh, let's blame it on the pilots, and
that's it. This is not to say that the pilots

(34:39):
are you know, they're untouchable. You can't touch them. If
there is an error, if there was an issue with
a pilot thing, then of course we need to ensure
that this is sop in every other aircraft that this
never happens ever again. That is the whole point of
the inquiry, as you just read out, It is not
to approach, but it is to ensure that something like

(35:02):
this never happens again. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
Uh, very good answer, rightly deep and I think for
a change, I finally got the sobering assessment of why
you should not discount the role that Boeing, not Boeing
per se, but the airline company and the system could
play because you've you've not given that impassion, that one

(35:26):
forty character angry tweet on social media, but you explained
why this is the easy route. I mean, if you
do that, then bang, shut done.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
You have no liability on the aircraft company, on the
airline nobody, nobody, it's it's the pilots, the pilot or
is the easiest thing to do, and not saying that
this would be a conclusion, but it is the easiest,
easiest way for this whole thing to go away.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
In fact, during the seventy seven crisis, the first one
was the Lionaire. It was an Indian pilot in bold
if I forgot his name. He was part of if
I'm not wrong, and there was a tad bit of
racism involved as well. If I'm not wrong, it was.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Ly yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
Would have been fine. And also I'm guessing one of
the places you're coming from is that during the seventy
seven MAX crisis you also saw that it wasn't just
Boeing that light, it was the entire US system. There
was some sort of collusion between the FA was regulars
bowing and Boeing the company that's regreted, but the FA
in fact, I think, if I if I'm not wrong,
the documentary you're talking about, talks about how Boeing appoints

(36:32):
people to the FAA to supervise Boeing because you know,
fun crunches and stuff like, something on those lines and
sort of, you know, giving a very broad pitture. People
can look it up and get the exact technicalities, but
it's something on those lines. The company that is supposed
to be regulated either funds or ensurance that the regulation
happens through its own own channels. Essentially, that's how the

(36:52):
system over their works, and that's sort of how the
whole seventy seven MAX crisis with the mcs, yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Sort of happened. And of course whistle blows just kill
them yes, just kill the shame.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
And as it happen. Yeah right, we'll talk more about
this part after a quick.

Speaker 3 (37:07):
Break, because the first thing which came to my mind
after that heartbreaking wficant of Silaj was that tweet of
Jiminisham that he did exactly six years ago when Newsal
lost that final on boundary count rule, and he tweeted, kids,
don't take up sport, take up making or something. Die
at sixty really fat and happy, because as I said

(37:29):
in my tweet, more often than not, sports always breaks
your heart and I did yesterday.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
I think Schumann explained it beautifully.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
Yeah, he defended Rega in the press conference saying that
you know, they waited for the second new ball, which
was eventually for five point one was away I think, yeah,
when India got bowled out, so when the harder ball
comes in, they could have taken a couple of risks
and scored those boundaries.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
Welcome back, Sai. Now to talk about what the report
does not talk about, like you said, and that actually
what I want to talk about is that the information
black hole that has created the opportunity for the speculation
in the first place since the crash happened. I think
there was maybe one press confidence by the Civiliviation Minister.

(38:16):
There was one press release about the black box being recovered.
There was sourd spirits reporting initially that the black box
piece was being sent to the US, and then source
based reporting again saying in India, maheoga, I don't worry
about that officially, Like I said, one press release, he
recovered one press confidence and then this report bang in
the middle of the night when everyone was asleep in India.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
Though.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
I think I have a theory for that because I
calculated it wasn't the thirtieth day exactly if I'm from
the report came out, So I think they were running
very close to the deadline. And two o'clock our time
is actually close to midnight, where the where the deadline hits.
I'm guessing that's probably what happened. They were like, you know,
just last minute, why rush may they got the report out.
I'm not sure, but I think that's what happened. But
still it does not it's a bad look.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
I mean, it is a black hole when you're talking
of black boxes.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
Exactly, black hole exactly, especially the case like this, So
much pressure and that's led to all the speculation, right.
So one of the things that struck me was that,
like you said, they've just picked two not even actual sentences.
They've paraphrased what the pilot said. They haven't said which
pilot said. What do. I think there's a good argument
to make not to be doing that, because that would

(39:24):
actually to moret speculations. If you identify who said did
you turn it off, then there would be no he
said it, so that guy must have done something x
y z x y x y z, because I'm pretty
sure they know who said it. Yes, I'm fairly it's
fairly easy for them to know who whose voice was,
whose voice it was that said it. But they've picked
two sentences out of like you said, like several sentences

(39:47):
they must have they talked about. They haven't described what
the n sounds in the cockpits were like, because there's
one theory as well that when you switch it off
the cutof switches, they make a click sound, very audible
clicks sound that should have been captured by the cockpit
voice recorder. Another aviation expert said that if the engines
turned off at that height, not any at any height,

(40:10):
almost every system on the plane would do spar and
that would lead to a cacophony of alerts. You know,
this is down, this is down, this is down, and
the pip the cockpit w blaring. Like you said, none
of that described in the in the report. The reason
I'm asking this is not as though they don't have
access to this. This is not something they have to decode.
I mean they have. It's a ninety second cockpit voice recording.
I'm pretty sure they've heard the full version. They know

(40:32):
exactly what's happened, but they chose only to reveal that
one small part. Do you think that is not perhaps
a good move on their part, or maybe they have
a reason for doing that and we don't know that.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
I really don't, like I said, they, I mean, we
need an inquiry report to decode the preliminary report. I mean,
you know, what were the what were the factors that uh,
you know led to them releasing certain parts of the
CVR and you know, not all of it, just possibly
ten seconds of conversation and not the entire ninety seconds.

(41:04):
Because I think what you said is closer to the
truth that they don't want to reveal what really went
on and they're keeping it for the main report who knows,
but you know, some other thing is that if there
was a deliberate This just hit me that if there
was a deliberate pilot error or wilful pilot sabotage or

(41:26):
something like that, then that doesn't remain a normal inquiry.
Then it becomes a criminal investigation. Right, So then you're
immediately looking at NFIR being registered and a separate investigation
going into that, because if you're looking at a wilful
sabotage or you know, a pilot willfully doing all of
that and they know that, that would be an immediate

(41:49):
criminal investigation, and it's not something that you can start,
you know, several months from It has to happen now.
So the fact that it hasn't happened now leads me
to believe this is against speculation, right. It just leads
me to believe that it wasn't what we think it
is that the pilots did it. There is some other

(42:10):
technical issue at play over here, because otherwise they would
straight away have gone in for a That's what the
s sop is. If you know this, you can't hold
that information and say, look, I know that when I
looked at the ninety seconds, and it appeared to me that,
you know, say pilot aided something or pilot bea did something,
and we have reason to believe there was sabotage involved,

(42:32):
or he did it willfully. Then there's a whole new
set of then the police centers the it's no longer
an accident investigation, it's a criminal investigation. The fact that
it didn't happen here suggests that there is something else
at play.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
But you know, even the fact that the twenty eighteen
USA advisory that was mentioned in the beginning of the report,
I found the policement of that also very odd. It
didn't kind of go with the floor of the important
was one we could direct you film, you know, because
they didn't really say anything. They said, this advice was there,
it was not mandatory so India, and it did not
do anything about it. However, the trust control the Tottle

(43:11):
control module of which the switch is a part, that
was to change twice according to those secutives on this
particular aircraft, and there were no complaints about the switches
in the first place. So I mean, it just seems like,
you know, it was just put there for I don't
know what again, So that's what I'm saying. So apart
from so if we just move away from the crash
itself and the possible causes for it, I have some

(43:32):
questions about how did they go about, you know, writing
this report and releasing this report in the first place.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Do you also have such questions? I really want to
know how they did that. You know that, like I said,
they went in this is a separate report. This is
the report in itself, how they went into this thing.
And you know, I think at some point books will
be written about this. There was there is certainly a
movie that's going to be made on because it is.
It's it's a heartrending tragedy. And think so many people

(43:57):
are touched by everyone who knows where they were, you know,
on the twelfth of June when it happened that that
very very you know, I remember I was here in
the newsroom and when I saw that thing on social media,
my heart sank and I said, I I just I'm
just praying, I said, I just hope it's a small

(44:18):
trainer aircraft that's gone down, because the initial thing, as
you know, was that plume of black small air aircraft
has crashed. I saw that wisp of smoke, and I said,
I hope it's a small trainer that was, you know,
flying a thing, not that I wish anyone, you know,
And the pilots were saved miraculously. But as the camera
came closer and closer to the plume of smoke, I

(44:40):
knew there was something terribly wrong. The kind of flame,
that was the smoke, that was the density of the
smoke suggested it was a passenger air line, and you know,
and then you know, you hope against hope and all that.
But but the thing is that, yeah, back to your question.
The fact is that I really want to know the
kind of pressures that were there on this four men

(45:01):
or the five person investigation, five person investigation. How are
they selected for it, What are their backgrounds or their qualifications,
what they went through. You know, all of this will
come out eventually. I think we are in the early
days of this inquiry. Like you said, it is the
most sensational air crash in recent times. And I was

(45:23):
in school. I remember when Kanishka went down and all
of us were touched by it. It happened so far away,
it happened in the Atlantic, but here we were this
bunch of school students in Mumbai, in a small school
in Mumbai, was so you know, hit by it. We
had class projects that went into this to study the
causes of the crash, and so we actually came up

(45:46):
with this little thing which described how it happened and
how it broke up. And so it is something that
a lot of people would want answers to. And I'm
sure this is it's not going to go away in
a hurry, however, much so certain invested interests might try
to brush it inunder the carpet for many various reasons.
This isn't going away anyway, right, uh, for.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Not to that is the fact that select parts of
the Brilim probe report were leaked to a couple of publications.
One is their Current, a very reputed aviation aviation website,
and the other General journal. Now we are a journalist,
so we uh know and value and celebrate when a

(46:32):
reporter scoop something so great job to these guys. However,
the fact remains that this was leaked by somebody from here.
Because regardless of how good a reporter the WS reporter
was or the reporter was, somebody chose to speak somebody
chose to answer that question. Okay, this is what's going
to be there in the report. So, like you were saying,
the probe team is a five member team, all Indians. Interestingly,

(46:54):
I think the NTSB of the US is also part
of the probe. I'm not sure what the past obser
but they also did help with the crucial equipment to.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
Decote that's recode the black boxes.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
So again, a conspiracy theory theorist in me is asking,
do you think the US observers could have had any
role to play in terms of leaking the information?

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Oh no, why would you say that, the conspiracy theorist
did you? Yeah, I mean, I'm not discounting that. But
you know, at the end of the day, it's journalists
who get their you know, scoops. A whole lot of
journalists got scoops. In two thousand and three, if you remember,
they when the US was about to invade Iraq, that
Saddam Mussein had weapons of mass destructions, right, And it

(47:40):
was the New York Times I think that did a
series of stories which insisted that Saddam had weapons of
mass destructions and the whole ecosystem was primed for this invasion.
They went ahead and they invaded Iraq and just about
half a million Iraqis died, right, and no apology whatever

(48:01):
given to anyone. So and of course we sat out
of that war. And I think that is the best
diplomatic decision that India has taken post independence, that we
sat out of that conflict. The enormous pressure on us
to join that invasion into Iraq. But that's the again,
the defense correspondent me talking. But here, I mean, who's
to say that this didn't suit a particular narrative? So

(48:24):
nobody leaks anything without exactly the word the reason, right,
there is a certain narrative that had to be created,
and it is quite possible that this part of that
report was leaked. We said, oh, you know, guys, it
was the switches that went off, and you know, the
pilots they turned it off. There's no other way it
could have happened. We don't know about the twenty eighteen incident,

(48:47):
or the twenty nineteen incident, or the twenty twenty incident,
or all of those other incidents of the software crashes
and all that, But here it's the pilots that you know.
So this is this pointed to a certain narrative that
was being created. Finally, the end of the day day
it is all about, you know, narrative warfare, and this
is what we're looking at. So while there is the
journalist in me believes it is the job of a

(49:09):
journalists to get scoops. I've made a lot of my
greatest stories were on leaks, right, some of them motivated,
some or not. But the fact is that in this case,
it suggests that there were other forces at play. And
because of the like I mentioned in the beginning, the

(49:29):
kind of stakes there are in this game. It's a
very very high stakes game. It is not about a company,
It is not just about a corporation, or it's not
about an aircraft. It is the United States of America,
one of the biggest aircraft manufacturers in the world, which

(49:51):
has a lot to lose from something that could come
out of this report. So low and behold, a certain
part of that report goes out to some very reputed organization,
the newspapers, and a certain narrative is crafted. So even

(50:11):
before them the formal report comes out, you have a
certain narrative that is already created. Like I mean, I
go back to opsindur as well, you know, in the
beginning there was a certain narrative is that oh you know,
it was the Indian Air Force lost a lot of
aircraft and it was five ralf hours or it was
six rough hours, and a certain narrative had already been built.

(50:33):
But of course that was an ongoing kind of operation
and India did it come back. We haven't revealed the
number of aircraft that went on there, so I think
the Chief of Defense Staff did mention the craft were lost,
but we recaliborated our strategy and came back on the
tenth of May with another set of things. But my
point of mentioning this was to talk about narratives. We

(50:54):
are now in a sixth dimension of warfare, which is
you have lands, air space, cyber and you have the
sixth dimension of conflict, which is narrative warfare. So you're
possibly looking at, you know, this new dimension of conflict
that's opened up, which is narratives, because there are very,

(51:15):
very powerful interests that could be hurt by you know,
the results of this report coming out as it has
been in the past, the shares of the OEM have crashed,
They've taken a reputation hit like thirty percent of their
equal to something like thirty percent of their and will

(51:37):
turnover or something like that. There were figures that were
put out which said that how did an aircraft manufacturer
that was once the greatest in the world went to
becoming one of the most hated and most suspected and
literally every single accident was attributed to them, and not
just aircraft but even spacecraft. You know, that's how bad

(51:59):
things were at at that OEM. So I guess there
are very powerful forces that play in this investigation as well,
there as we will discover in the days ahead, because
like we mentioned at the start, this is no ordinary inquiry.
This is going to have a lot of geopolitics. There's
going to be a lot of big personalities involved, if

(52:20):
they're not already, because the stakes are not just about
an aircraft or an aircraft manufacturer nation. It's about several
nations and their relationships.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
Yeah, and let's not forget this also involves a storied
Indian company that's sort of reviving a storied Indian government
brand Idea.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
Yeah, huge brand.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
And this is a very big deal for Tata as well. Yeah,
because they've just taken over at India and since taking
over this sort of off topic here, but and since
taking over, there have been a fair number of complaints
online if you've noticed about poor service and bad interiors,
et cetera. And there's been a lot of questions what
are the Tratas doing exactly? People, I didn't question whether
it was the right move to give it Chartas and

(53:03):
perhaps somebody else should have taken it over, and then
you have this happening, right. Final thought, Sandeep is again
about the probe team and this sort of sort of
kind of bring everything to a close and perhaps give
a sort of theory to many of the questions we've posed.
Is it possible that they also do not know exactly

(53:25):
what to do? And when I say that, what I
mean is they are season investigators. I looked up some
of the names. One of them, if I'm not the
chief investigator, is the person who was involved in the
investigating the air and the express crash that happened in Kerala. Yeah,
the tabletop run way that just fell.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
Off the edge of the role.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
So if I'm not from the chief investigator in this
case is the person who's also investigating that one. So
this season investigators when it comes to investigating air crashes,
So technically they would be definitely very very sound. But
to face this sort of pressure that we just international pressure,
public pressure, pressure to an extent by your what is
dissected by two guys sitting on a podcast, and by

(54:03):
millions more people are millions, people are debating, people are
reading between the lines, people are attributing motives to why
did you pick those two sentences? Why do you include
that and not this? I'm pretty sure they're not insulted
from this. They read everything, even though governments have said,
you know, you do your thing, no one's can interfere.
But there will be the psychological pressure on them. How

(54:23):
difficult do you think it's going to be for them
going forward and right now to continue.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
With I think it's I mean, like you rightly pointed
out the I think there's going to be enormous pressure
on them, and I think that is the reason that
the government is kind of shielding them as well. You
don't see them coming out the way that they do
in normal in other countries as well, you know, so
that that there is an element of trying to shield them.
And let's not forget that one of the investigators was

(54:50):
given security cover. Yes, right, what does that tell you
that the government is being extra careful? Right there are
like I said, and that when he was given a
security cover, that led me to believe that the government
also believes there could be very powerful forces at play
a year and this is a decision that wasn't taken,

(55:15):
you know, without a lot of thought. And I'm sure
there's a lot of pressure on them. And it's not
like not even like that crash in Caerla, that this
is this, Like I said, what happened in Kerla, that crash,
it was tragic. They came out with a report and
then you know, life went on. But the timing of

(55:35):
this crash, the circumstances, the number of lives lost, the
reputation that's taken now with that, and the precise timing
of you know, so many companies, corporations, governments and stakes
involved suggest that this is not an ordinary inquiry and
there is going to be a lot of pressure on
these investigators. I'm sure that they're good blocks and I'm

(55:57):
sure they're doing their job even as we speak, and
they're in some safe house somewhere putting all of this,
you know, together, waiting for that moment when they can
actually release the thing. And my sense is that they
already know what happened. Yeah, and the government also knows,
at least section of the government knows, and they're possibly
looking for the right time to put it out there.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
And all the evidence is basically because they probably have
a hunch. Key ninety nine percent, you're sure this happened,
but you need to be damn damn sure if we
go out to the public.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
You need to cover all your bases and then you
need to bring it out and you know, possibly you
know who knows, sensitize the people as well to what's
going to come out. So yeah, I think it and
that's one reason why it needs to come out, you
know at the time that it needs to because you know,
there is no pressure on when you can release the report.

(56:48):
There has been a case in China not so long
ago where the government, the Chinese government refused to release
the report citing national security concerns. Right, this was the
case of that China airline. Was it an air bus
that or Boeing again that literally crashed. It went vertically

(57:08):
into the ground and it was I think it even
crossed one mark when it was doing that. It was
almost like a about it's about three years back. It
was a China Airlines aircraft two or three years back.
Where the Chinese government till date they have the report,
they're not releasing it saying that it could cause national
security concerns, it could cause societal issues or whatever the
thing is, so they didn't come out with that report there.

(57:30):
But I think I don't think that. I don't see
that happening. In our case, we will come out with it.
We are a very different society. I think we're a
different government as well, and that report will come out,
but when it does is a matter of speculation for us.
We've gone through literally every possible reason for the crash
except maybe, you know, extra terrestrial involvement.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
But yes, yeah, true, And you know, I think one
of the reasons for the pressure would also be that
no matter which way this goes, no matter matter what
cause ultimately is identified, this report will end up changing
the world of aviation. Whether it's human error, whether it
is pilots uside without a doubt, whether it is a

(58:11):
technical glitch that led to fail one of the most
advanced airliners to lose engines at the lowest possible altitude
from which you can't even recover. Pilots are even trained
to recover from that. It's impossible. It's going to change aviation.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
It is going it's never going to be the same again.
And you know, every time in airliner takes off, you
know people are going to be looking at it with
bated breadth. Oh my god, it's crossed this. It's been
done two hundred feet, three hundred feet fore you till
the time the thing hasn't retracted and it's taken off,
you're not going to be sure of it again. I mean,
who would have thought this kind of a catastrophe A

(58:45):
twin engine feel like, you know, the rarest of rare occurrences,
it could have happened. You don't even train for these
kinds of situations. Possibly you would start seeing pilots training
for such. Yes, what to do in an eventuality like this?
What can you do in anyway? In physics? It's not allow,
it doesn't exactly. You can't recover when you're at what

(59:06):
one hundred feet two hundred feet? What would you do? Then? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (59:10):
Right, thanks on leep, great chat. Like I said, this
episode was more about us just raising some questions that
we had because you don't have answers, but hopefully, like
you said, we have answers sometimes soon. It won't happen
in the next few months. I think it will be a
year or so if I'm not if I can guess correctly,
but let's hope its earlier than that. But again, we

(59:30):
don't know. But that's fine as long as the report
brings up the truth. But I think the one thing
to take away from a chat, if the investigators are
listening to us, is perhaps try and be a bit
more transparent. Don't alease reports at post midnight, don't not
have press conferences when you're fairly certain about some things.
Maybe just have a transparent chat with the public that

(59:53):
because that'll help is the speculation and keep it at
rest in you know, people just discussing ad nausea.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
What went wrong. We saw that, We saw that in
obs Dour as well. Fact, that's one of the biggest
concerns that we had is that there was not enough briefing.
There's not enough information that was put out there. Of course,
conscious of fact that it is live military operation, but
you need you need briefings so that you know you
dispel any such false you know, rumors or something that

(01:00:20):
is that could spread panic.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
But even then in os Dur, I mean, yeah, for
some day one did admit that we've lost something. Yeah,
they never said the number or the type of equipment,
but they said key. You know, when the question was
posed by journey uring a press confidence that there's some speculations.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
The twelfth around the twelfth of Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
So the Directer of Air Operations said that, you know,
key losses are part of combat. Is active combat situation.
So I will not answer a question.

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
It's fine something like that. Right now, we needed something
as you know, credible and as coherent as that to
come out. But yeah, I mean who knows this This,
like you said, Dave, this is going to change aviation forever.

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
Right, So thanks on LIP a great chat, and I
would I look forward to seeing you again next week.
That's it for the six Fans stores. For more, tune
in next week. Till then, stay safe and not cross
any boundaries for the passport by