In the effort to ascertain the cause of the Air India Flight AI171 crash, killing over 270 persons, a veteran pilot, Capt. Steve Scheibner, has said the accident may have occurred following a possible fatal error by the co-pilot of the aircraft.
Capt. Scheibner, a former American Airlines pilot with decades of commercial flying experience, suggested the Boeing 787 Dreamliner may have experienced a critical mistake in the cockpit just moments after take-off from Ahmedabad on June 12.
Scheibner, speaking via his YouTube channel, theorised that the co-pilot may have retracted the flaps instead of the landing gear, an error that could have caused the aircraft to lose lift and fall from the sky.
“I think the pilot flying said to the co-pilot, ‘Gear up,’ at the appropriate time. “I think the co-pilot grabbed the flap handle and raised the flaps instead of the gear,” Scheibner said. “If that happened, this explains a lot of why this aeroplane stopped flying.”
His remarks come as Indian air crash investigators continue to examine data retrieved from the aircraft’s black boxes and begin interviews with crew members who had flown on the aircraft in the days before the tragedy.
The aircraft was delivered to Air India in 2014 and crashed into a residential area less than a minute after departure on June 12, 2025.
Aviation analyst Marco Chan, a former pilot and senior lecturer at Buckinghamshire New University, told the BBC the crash could have involved human error.
“That would point to potential human error if flaps aren’t set correctly. But the resolution of the video is too low to confirm that,” Chan said.
Boeing, however, has firmly denied any manufacturing lapses, saying the 787 Dreamliner passed more than 150,000 safety tests and audits.
A multinational team including experts from the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch and U.S. authorities have joined the Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation in probing the disaster. An anti-terrorism unit is also involved, though officials say this is standard procedure.
