‘NEVER Seen Anything Like It’ Captain Steeeve on Air India ‘MURDER’ Theory

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0:37They want desperately to blame this on Boeing, and I don't want to blame it on the pilots. I'm the last guy that wants to do that. Some things are plain and some things are clear.

0:52Piers Morgan:Is it looking more and more like the plane functioned perfectly correctly and that therefore it was something done by the pilot.

1:05There is no universe where there's any procedure ever in the history of commercial flight where you place both fuel control switches to cut off, leave them there for 10 seconds, right after rotate. There is just not a scenario that that fits into.

1:25Piers Morgan:Well, last month, Air India Flight 171 crashed shortly after taking off en route to London. The disaster killed 260 people, including 241 of the 242 passengers, instantly becoming one of the worst aviation catastrophes in years. Investigations are still ongoing, but the latest data retrieved from the black boxes indicates it may not necessarily have been an accident. So it did happen. Well, commercial pilot and aviation commentator Steve Schneidner has provided invaluable insights and expert analysis for millions of followers since the crash. And I'm pleased to say that Captain Steve joins me now.

1:59Piers Morgan:Steve, great to have you on Uncensored. Your commentary on this extraordinary story has been viewed many millions of times now. So I want to start, because there may be some people who have not seen the footage originally of the crash. I want to start by just showing what happened. And then I'm going to get into all the details with you. But just to start with, talk me through what we're looking at here. So that's one of the two videos that surfaced initially. There's the second one of the airplane taking off. And what we can see here is that the airplane gains lift. It's got enough speed to gain flight.

2:33But shortly after that, something happens to cause a loss of lift over the wings. We now know, due to the preliminary report, that it was a dual engine failure. And that dual engine failure was due to fuel being cut off to the engines. And so with that being said, the whole flight was less than 60 seconds long. And now the preliminary report has told us, you know, exactly how they lost fuel to both of those engines and then lost lift.

3:00Piers Morgan:So explain the significance of this new revelation about both of the fuel things being off at the same time. What does that mean? To a pilot, of your experience, what does that mean? So the fuel control switches are the things that everybody is talking about. And those are the two mechanisms. They're mechanical. They're spring loaded. It's a three-step process. You pull it out, lift it up, and then you drop it over a detent, and the spring holds it in place. It's a very simple mechanism. Both engines have one. It opens up the fuel valves to the engine, and now the fuel, along with the spark, the engine will light off.

3:34And those turbine engines will continue to run until they're fuel starved. I fuel starve the engines on every flight. When I get to the gate and I set the parking brake, I instruct my co-pilot to take those fuel control switches from run. and he pulls them up, drops them down, lowers them into place. It's a three-step process. Both of those, we fuel, starve the engine, we shut down, and everybody gets off the airplane. So it's a very simple mechanism. It's not real complicated, but that's apparently, from the preliminary report, what happened. Both of those fuel control switches were placed to cut off.

4:06Piers Morgan:Now, in all your time, have you heard of a passenger plane pilot doing that at that moment of takeoff? No, I have never seen anything like this before. There's no known procedure that I know of where at 300 or 400 feet you would place both of those field control switches to cut off and then leave them there for 10 seconds before returning them back to the run position. According to the report, that's exactly what happened. They were placed one at a time into the cutoff position a second apart from each other. That would be consistent with a one-handed operation. You can't reach over and grab both of them.

4:43It's got to be just one hand, so you do one and then you would do the other. The idea that maybe one of them somehow slipped out of the detent on its own is hard enough to believe. But both of them, it's not believable.

4:59Piers Morgan:So the captain of the plane was a captain sub-Arwal. Now, he was very experienced. And the cockpit voice recording has captured one pilot asking the other, why did he use the cutoff? To which the person replies he didn't. The recording doesn't clarify who said what. At the time of the takeoff, the co-pilot was flying the aircraft while the captain was monitoring. So specifically in relation to that, Captain Steve, what does that indicate to you? Well, I think you have to look at how the question was phrased. You know, you can see those fuel cutoff switches out of the corner of your eye. And so when pilots are rotating the aircraft off the ground, they're using almost exclusively their peripheral vision, right?

5:48Because as they pull the nose up, all they're going to see in front of them is sky. They have no reference. So out the side of your eyes, you're going to see the ground begin to lower. And that's a normal thing. At the same time, if somebody reaches over to grab those fuel control switches, that's going to be very unusual. That's not a normal thing. Your brain is going to register. Like, what did I just see? If they had somehow just slipped out of the detent and down into cutoff, I think the question would have been more along the lines of what happened or why did that happen? Not why did you do that?

6:21I think they saw something that explains that question to me a whole lot better than they just somehow slipped out of the position. And I think they saw some movement over there connected with that. And it would make sense because they were done one second apart. And typically we start and we cut off the engines at the gate left to right, the number one engine to the number two. And in the report, they said the left engine was shut down first and then the right a second after it.

6:46Piers Morgan:So there's something called the RAT, the Ram Air Turbine. Essentially, it's an emergency propeller that was also deployed. And my understanding is that is also incredibly rare for that to happen on takeoff and so quickly. Is that is that your understanding? Yeah, the rat is an instrument of last resort. It's designed to give the pilot a little bit of electrical power, enough to shoot an approach and to talk on a radio and enough hydraulic power to operate the aircraft so they can land it safely. It's connected always with a dual engine failure. I think on the 787, it also deploys if there's a total electrical failure or a total hydraulic failure.

7:26In this case now, we know it was the dual engine failure that caused the rat to deploy. I've never seen one deploy that close to the ground. And one of the things that bothered me right from the beginning with this whole scenario was how quickly the rat deployed. If an engine or both engines fail, typically it will take some time for them to fail, 30 seconds to 60 seconds for those big engines to spool down to the point where the rat then would get the command to come out and give them that electrical and hydraulic pressure. It doesn't give them any thrust, by the way. It's designed to be at 35 ,000 feet.

7:59If you lost both engines, you could glide the airplane down and still fly it. At 400 feet, you just simply don't have the altitude. But that rat looks like it deployed immediately, which would be consistent with both fuel control switches being set to cut off. Part of the logic in the computer would instantaneously deploy that RAT. So that was a big question mark in my mind after the report came out that said both fuel control switches ended up in cutoff. That explained why the RAT came out so quickly.

8:27Piers Morgan:So it would be an automatic computer generated response. The airplane was operating exactly the way it was designed to operate regarding the RAT, for sure. Look, this was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. There have been a lot of issues with Boeing recently. From everything that you have now gleaned about this, including the initial reports, is it looking more and more like the plane functioned perfectly correctly and that therefore it was something done by the pilot or co-pilot? My take on it is the airplane was operating exactly the way it was designed. I don't think there was anything wrong with this particular aircraft.

9:07When you place both fuel cutoff switches to cutoff, that will fuel start the engines and they'll both flame out. You'll stop getting thrust out of those engines. I understand the complexities with Boeing over the years, and I think they're two separate issues. I've heard a thousand comments on my last couple of videos of people that they want desperately to blame this on Boeing, and I don't want to blame it on the pilots. I'm the last guy that wants to do that. Some things are plain and some things are clear. whether it was intentional placing of the fuel control switches to cut off or unintentional.

9:43That's two different things. But I really firmly believe that there had to be a human hand on both of those for them to go to cut off. I don't think Boeing has fault in this one. They might have fault in some other things in the past, but you can't confuse the two things and try to make it work so that, you know, Boeing is to blame. I don't think they are.

10:01Piers Morgan:So this then leads to the theory which is gathering most momentum, which is this was not an accident, that some action by one of the pilots, and most attention has formed on the most experienced pilot, Captain Subawal, that according to The Telegraph, he was the lead pilot, considering leaving the airline early to look after his elderly father. His mother had died, apparently, and he'd been quite depressed about that. Other reports in Indian media, I think, which was relayed also over here, had him a neighbour of Captain Subawal saying the pilot told her, there's one or two more flights, then I'm going to be just with Papa.

10:43Piers Morgan:He apparently suffered from mental health issues and depression, had taken time off in the last few years following his mother's death. Now, just to be clear, we don't know whether any of that is relevant to what happened here. But it's certainly, if you were pursuing the theory of a murder-suicide, which is now gathering momentum, if you put together all this stuff about the captain, it's not massively far-fetched. And again, we don't know, but it's not massively far-fetched to see a sort of line here where the captain has had some kind of mental health episode and has deliberately shut these two fuel switches off.

11:23Piers Morgan:What do you think? Hey, Chicago, class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new fave footwear? Step into a local croc store and step into your new look. Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up. It shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest croc store today. Today's show is sponsored by American Financing. Financing. If you're feeling stretched by everyday expenses, groceries, gas, bills, you're not alone. Most Americans are putting these costs on credit cards and many feel there's no way out.

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12:52I'm not a psychologist and I'm not here to diagnose anybody after the fact. However, it is a very stressful job piloting. And, you know, fatigue is a factor. And, you know, balancing your home life and being on the road and living out of a suitcase. Those of us in any profession that travel a whole lot, those things are difficult things to balance sometimes in our lives. you throw on top of it the stress and the responsibility and the trust that the general public places in us every day flying those big jets they're complicated all of that stuff they're all factors but i'm i'm not the guy to weigh in and say you know i know definitively one way or another i do know that on my youtube channel we're starting a conversation now about mental health and emotional health with pilots regardless of whether that was the factor or the cause here, there's never a bad time to have that conversation, right?

13:46Because the general public is sitting in the back of the airplane, trusting us that when we show up to work, we're ready to go fly an airplane. And that means emotionally and mentally. So I've worked something into my pre-flight brief that 34 years ago, I was flying with a student and this student was a great student, but this one day we were flying together, he was totally off. And I just turned to him and And I said, is everything OK? And he looked at me and tears started coming down his face. I said, I got the aircraft. I took it. I said, man, tell me what's going on. His dad had been up until three in the morning trying to commit suicide.

14:22And this student had been on the phone talking his dad out of it. Three hours later, he's in an airplane trying to fly. That's not a time to go flying. So we took care of that. But I think the conversation now going forward with my fellow pilots is always, hey, how you doing? And I ask them that sincerely. And if I get the, you know, fine, I dig a little deeper. You know, I go, everything OK at home? You ready to fly today? And if I get a smile and a thumbs up, yeah, then we're great. Every once in a while, somebody says, are you serious about that question? I say, yeah, I'm very serious about it.

14:54They go, well, I'm OK to go flying today. But if you don't mind, you know, I wouldn't mind somebody to talk to. So that's an important conversation for pilots to be having with fellow pilots. Yeah.

15:03Piers Morgan:The Indian Commercial Pilots Association, ICPA, said the crew acted in line with their training and responsibilities under challenging conditions and the pilots shouldn't be vilified based on conjecture. To casually suggest pilot suicide without verified evidence is a gross violation of ethical reporting and a disservice to the dignity of the profession. And other people point to the fact that only 19 people on the ground were killed, which they say suggests the pilots had heroically diverted the plane, as they were lordy were doing for a while, to avoid residential population. If this was deliberate, goes the argument, then why would that happen?

15:44Piers Morgan:I guess the answer to that could be, well, the co-pilot might have engineered that if he felt that the pilot had gone rogue and done something nefarious.

15:57Piers Morgan:In the end, Captain Steve, you put it all together. To me, I'm not an expert, you are, but to me it stretches credulity to think that a pilot of that experience, and the co-pilot was very experienced too, they'd had a lot of hours flying, that one of them would suddenly, for no explicable reason whatsoever, do something which would inevitably cause that plane to crash. unless it was a deliberate act. I mean, how could that happen accidentally? I mean, many passengers, I fly all the time. My immediate thought was, well, if it's not deliberate, how on earth can pilots just crash a plane like that by accident, just by flicking a switch?

16:42Right. Well, the mathematics behind it is it's 2.5 billion to 1, a dual-engine flame-out right after takeoff in a 787. So anything we talk about with this incident falls into that category of$2.5 billion to one. So everything just seems unbelievable. And even a pilot reaching over and cutting off the fuel control switches, whether it was intentional or a mistake, both of those fall into the category of pilot error. We do know that the switches were placed to cut off, and 10 seconds later they were placed back to run. Remembering now that there's two pilots up in that cockpit, if one did it, the other probably was the one that undid it.

17:23Yeah. And then but they only had a 60 second flight and they didn't have a lot of lift over those wings. So if the one pilot tried to steer away from a larger building into a smaller building, that was about as good as was going to get on a short flight like that. But again, if the one person did it, let's not say it was intentional. Let's say it was unintentional. The other person realized it and they did place him back to run. They tried to get those engines running again. Clearly, if I had 30 seconds left in that flight, I would do what I could. Yeah. with that short time span to get it pointed someplace where it caused the least loss of life.

17:58Piers Morgan:Could you ever imagine doing that yourself accidentally? No. Do you think any experienced pilot would have the same answer? Well, I said this in my last video on my channel. I said there is no universe where there's any procedure ever in the history of commercial flight where you place both fuel control switches to cut off, leave them there for 10 seconds right after rotate. There is just not a scenario that that fits into. And this, according to the report, that's what happened. There is a dual engine flame out procedure where you take both switches and place them to cut off and then immediately back to run to restart the engines.

18:43That's done within a second of each other. There's no procedure where you leave them there for 10 seconds and then put them back into the run position. There just isn't.

18:52Piers Morgan:Could the computer, which you've already said, automatically deployed the RAT, could the computer have malfunctioned and actually done the switches? Or is that not physically possible? Well, anything is possible, but according to the report now, remember, there's lots of eyeballs on that report. There was Boeing, the NTSB, the FAA, the AAIB, The Canadians were involved. Lots of people had input into that report. According to that report, the physical switches were placed to cut off. Now, they do that in conjunction with the cockpit voice recorder. The voice part of the CVR is what throws us off.

19:32We think it's only recording the voices. Any sound in that cockpit is recorded. So the flight data recorder is going to show that the engines were cut off at the switch. You're also going to hear on the cockpit voice recorder the click-click of that motion. So they're putting those two things together to say they were physically placed to cut off. And then 10 seconds later, they were placed back to run. I don't think this was an electrical glitch. They would have said that in the report if it was. Is it possible it could have been? Yeah, but they didn't say that in the report. So I'm just sticking with what they've reported to us at this point.

20:06Piers Morgan:One passenger survived, Vish Ramesh, who lives in the UK. hey, already, as happens with every story like this, conspiracy theorists have started up saying it's impossible that one person could survive. I think that's exactly what happened. What's your view of all the conspiracy theories raging? Hey, Chicago, class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new Faye footwear? Step into a local Crocs store and step into your new look. Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up. It shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next.

20:54Visit your nearest Croc store today. Well, probably the better way to put it is it's improbable, but it's not impossible, clearly, because he's got a ticket to prove where he was. He was seated in front of what's called the wing spar, and that's the heaviest, hardest part of the aircraft. So the leading edge of both wings where they attach to the fuselage, there's basically a steel girder underneath that holds those two together. I think he was in the perfect spot for that. That steel girder took most of the impact. He was right next to the exit door, which burst open. He looked like a pretty strong strapping guy.

21:28That was helpful. And at that point, when the impact and they came to a stop, I'm surprised, A, the fireball or the heat didn't get to him. But if that door was open and he had the presence of mind, obviously, to jump out and flee, he looked like he did have a few burns on him. But that would be the only way to explain what happened is he was the one in, what, 300 people that walked away from that thing. Unbelievable.