India AAIB’s request to refrain from drawing conclusions about the cause of the Air India crash is a textbook case of the pot calling the kettle black.

On July 17, India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), part of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, issued an appeal to the media to show restraint in reporting on the possible cause of the Air India Boeing 787 crash. The statement specifically called out the international media.

This is highly ironic, as it is primarily the Indian media that have been spreading numerous factual inaccuracies, examples here , here and here. Some have claimed that the preliminary report was written to protect Boeing. Certain experts, including pilots, have suggested that both engines may have failed and that the fuel control switches were moved as a result. The pilots are widely portrayed by Indian media, public and experts as heroes who fought to save the aircraft until the very last moment.

Also the Civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu of India urged western media to avoid speculation and lauded the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) for successfully decoding the black box data in India. Remarkable as mentioned above all India media speculate, come up with nonsense articles.

The AAIB’s statement appears to have been triggered by a report in The Wall Street Journal, which revealed that during the flight, the pilot flying — the first officer — asked the captain (pilot monitoring) why he had moved the fuel control switches to the cutoff position. The captain reportedly responded: “I did not do that.”

India media published dozens of nonsense statements made by retired pilots. Switches could not be moved in 1 second, then the blackbox made a mistake and incorrectly registered the switches moved. There were software errors in de FADEC. A lot of speculation on the cause and all were technical. All are 100% nonsense.