City Councilors Quash Fire Chief's Staffing Plans
This week on the New Mexico News Insiders Podcast, Chief Jaramillo joins Chris and Gabby to discuss the challenges and fulfilling parts of the job. She also discusses a contentious City Council meeting that had her in the hot seat defending a controversial staffing change she believes will improve response times in the city and ultimately help save lives in an emergency.
Some local firefighters addressed the staffing plan during public comment, accusing Chief Jaramillo of abandoning their two-paramedic rescue system and going against the so-called 'gold standard.' However, Chief Jaramillo claims her plan would provide quicker life-saving response to patients in an emergency, and says firefighters will have a chance to improve their EMS skills by rotating between trucks.
So why was it ultimately city councilors who quashed AFR's staffing plan? How is the Chief responding to AFR morale? Those topics and more are discussed in the full interview.
Stay informed with the latest news by subscribing to the New Mexico News Insiders Podcast wherever you listen. Download new episodes of the New Mexico News Insiders every Tuesday, starting around 5:30 a.m., Mountain time. Episodes are available on most podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Podbean, among others.
You can also watch our podcasts in video form both on-air or online. Tune in to an abbreviated version of the New Mexico News Insiders podcast on broadcast television every Wednesday at 10:35 p.m. on Fox New Mexico. Full video episodes are posted on KRQE's YouTube page at youtube.com/krqenews13.
Having trouble finding the show? Try searching your favorite podcast player with the term 'KRQE' or 'New Mexico News Insiders' (without the quotes). You can also use the links above to find the podcast on each service or listen to the audio player at the top of this post.
If you have a question, comment, or suggestion for who should be interviewed on the podcast, let us know! Email your hosts at chris.mckee@krqe.com or gabrielle.burkhart@krqe.com.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Yahoo
An Asheville respite supports the unhoused after hospital stays. It is now expanding.
ASHEVILLE - Trokon Guar was finally walking without a wheelchair. He'd come to Haywood Street Respite eight months earlier with a fractured leg. In July, the respite's screened-in porch dimmed the summer heat, an alcove tucked away from the near-constant activity of the downtown church. Guar demonstrated a few calf raises, grinning. He is a composer and musician. When it comes to genre, he's not picky — R&B, rock, jazz. But he favors spoken word hip hop. In a new music video on his YouTube channel, snippets of footage are filmed in Haywood Street Congregation's sanctuary, backlit by stained glass. The 12-bed respite offers post-acute, short-term care after hospitalization for people experiencing homelessness. The intervention is intended to give them a place to recover, rather than ending up directly back on the street. 'This place has changed my life," Guar, 34, told the Citizen Times July 17. He has been homeless for years. In-and-out of the hospital. If not for the respite, he said, "I had nowhere else to go." More: Homelessness after Helene: With final Buncombe disaster shelter closed, what's next? Respite expansion underway The respite is slated for expansion using funding from a $1.6 million grant, awarded by Buncombe County via American Rescue Plan Act dollars in September. The Continuum of Care recommended funding for the program after issuing a request for proposals last year to bolster area shelter beds. The project will grow the respite to 25 beds, more than doubling its capacity, adding a second-story addition to the building, along with an elevator and 3,300 square feet of new offices, bedrooms and common areas. Haywood Street Congregation, an urban ministry with the mission, "relationship, above all else," opened the respite in 2014. The brick church sits on the outskirts of downtown. It hosts a midweek Downtown Welcome Table, often a refuge for the city's unhoused. If the welcome table is the ministry's "hub," respite is its "heart," said Executive Director Laura Kirby. The city began processing its permit application July 1. Construction on the $1.9 million project is expected to begin construction in late September, Kirby said. It will take about 12 months. The respite will temporarily relocate residents to allow for uninterrupted operations. Respite Director Nicole Brown said the expansion will mean, first and foremost, turning less people away. Staff will also have more flexibility to keep people longer, leading to better outcomes for residents. A stay starts at two weeks, but lasts 45 days on average. Placements are made by referral, with many coming from Mission Hospital and the county's community paramedics. Those in respite care have a safe place to rest, meals, transportation to follow-up appointments and assistance accessing services and support. In 2022, the National Institute for Medical Respite Care selected Haywood Street's program, along with four others in the country, to receive capacity building assistance to increase the integration of medical respite with behavioral health care. There is a licensed clinical social worker on staff, as well as an in-house case manager, a peer support specialist, nurses and other 24/7 support. Asheville faces lack of affordable housing The goal is to create an exit plan for each person in respite care, like working toward long-term housing or connecting them with a behavioral health provider. It ensures people are added to the by-name list — a standard practice for an area Continuum of Care, with real-time information used to prioritize people to be slated for available housing programs dedicated to those exiting homelessness through coordinated entry. Asheville's list includes 690 people actively engaged with providers, according to Emily Ball, manager with the city's homeless strategy division. For the respite's first decade of operation, 70% of residents went somewhere other than the streets upon departure, and 87% were newly connected with primary care, with most attending at least the first follow-up appointment, according to Haywood Street figures. Guar, for example, is awaiting documents he needs to replace his identification and Social Security card before he can take next steps toward housing. He is hopeful for placement in a group home, before eventually moving into his own place. Others are waiting for housing at Vanderbilt Apartments or the housing authority. As the ministry shifted its model to work with people facing more complex issues — like those with intersecting medical and behavioral health needs — it can be more difficult to exit them into shelter, Brown said. Some shelters also may not be structured to support people in wheelchairs or on oxygen. 'So it might be that they're going outside, but they're going outside hopefully a lot more supported than they were when they came in," Brown said. Asheville also faces a lack of affordable housing options, Brown said. The city's 2024 Affordable Housing Plan found that 36% of all Asheville households are "cost-burdened," meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs. Between 2015 and 2021, median rent increased 33%, from $866 to $1,152, while median wages for workers in Asheville's top industries increased only 15%, the study found. Asheville has among the highest rents in the state. For this reason Haywood Street embarked on its own housing venture: constructing 41 permanently affordable apartments less than a half-mile from the church, aiming for occupancy by November. More: Haywood St.'s 41 affordable apartments named for Asheville activist Gloria Howard Free Community 'changes things' In the respite's kitchen July 17, hospitality manager Elizabeth Bower, affectionately referred to as the "house mom," was serving up a baked potato bar. She and Brown remembered the earliest days of Haywood Street Congregation's welcome table, back in 2010, making large batches of scrambled eggs in a residential kitchen. They didn't know the color changed when kept warm for too long. Faced with a pot of green eggs, they just made ham, too, Bower said. At the kitchen table was Tracy Fowler. He was homeless for about three years before coming to respite. 'I've been able to get the rest I've needed, get off the streets, get regulated on my meds. Become myself again," Fowler, 57, said. Accepting someone into a community is crucial to respite's mission, Brown said. "(It) just instantly changes things," she said. 'While the stay in respite might be short, the relationships that you build, and the support we offer, is long term with that connection with Haywood Street.' John Madden, 78, who prefers to go by "Jaunito," was living in Mexico when he fell ill. Unable to afford a doctor there, he came back to Asheville, where he lived for more than a decade before the pandemic in 2020. "I came back with no plans but to stay alive, if I could, or find out what was going on,' he said. He's experienced homelessness before — he estimated about 25 days total in the last five years — but the 10 days on the street before securing a spot at respite were brutal. One night on the street, "and I unravel in a way that is startling," he said. 'This place has been beyond miraculous," Madden said of the respite. "The staff are astonishing. I call them ninjas, because they have to handle every kind of problem, from psychological to housing ... I started to exhale once I got through the door.' Phillip Lucero, 65, was clear about the emotional and physical toll homelessness takes. He was in shelters for about three years, and on the street "fairly recently." 'This can really happen to anybody. I had a very good job. I had a really good apartment … And it just, piece by piece, fell apart in a matter of months," Lucero said. 'A couple of bad decisions and here I am. And it is extraordinarily difficult to survive." Places like respite make it possible, he said. They do a good job to make you feel "at home." He, Madden and Fowler are on various housing waitlists. Lucero said he has been on some of them for years. 'You become a target' The respite is working to break a cycle people can become trapped in when experiencing homelessness: bouncing from the street, to shelter, to jail, to the hospital and back. It is complicated by a lack of shelter beds. Further complicated by difficulty finding affordable housing. Sleeping or existing outside while homeless can result in a second-degree trespassing charge, Brown said. 'When you're homeless, you become a target for a lot of people. No one really cares about you," Guar said. You are arrested for disorderly conduct, for trespassing or are kicked out of buildings. It was enough to make him feel like no one "wanted anything to do with me." 'But these people here care," he said of respite. "They've shown me that there is people out there that care. My mentality has changed completely.' How to get help Call Haywood Street Respite at 828-301-3782. Learn more about respite referrals at More: BeLoved Asheville rebuilds with resilience in Swannanoa's Helene-damaged Beacon Village More: Could Asheville get alcohol-friendly social district downtown? Council may consider it Sarah Honosky is the city government reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. News Tips? Email shonosky@ or message on Twitter at @slhonosky. This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Downtown Asheville's Haywood Street Respite is expanding its beds Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Everything we know about the Air India crash points to an uncomfortable truth
With 260 casualties and only one surviving passenger, the Air India 171 crash is one of the deadliest aviation incidents in recent history — and so far it's proving to be one of the most frustratingly opaque. Video of the June 12 incident had previously captured the Boeing 787 taking off successfully from Ahmedabad bound for London, only to rapidly descend, crash into a medical college complex, and explode into flames. The crash killed all but one of the plane's 242 occupants. It also damaged five buildings, killed 19 people on the ground, and injured over 60 more. The weeks that followed saw rampant speculation, AI-generated hoaxes, and conspiracy theories. Finally, on July 11 India's air safety organization, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), issued a preliminary report into the cause of the disaster. The 15-page report pinpointed a dark and disturbing factor as the reason for the crash: Shortly after takeoff, someone or something cut the flow of fuel to both engines, almost simultaneously. This caused a brief but fatal dual engine shutdown that proved impossible for the plane to recover from. The implications of that double shutdown are quite bleak — but there's still a lot we don't know. What caused the crash? In the weeks following the tragedy, public speculation about the potential cause ranged from a bird strike to an electrical problem; some suggested fuel contamination, others a malfunction with the wing flaps. Many focused on what seemed to have been an extreme occurrence suggested by the visibility of the Ram Air Turbine (RAT), which deploys when there are engine problems: a total engine failure. Over on YouTube, many analyzed the crash, including some pilots. Among them was Trevor Smith, call sign 'Hoover,' a former military pilot who now flies for a commercial airline. On the side, he runs the YouTube crash analysis channel Pilot Debrief. Following the Air India crash, he emphasized what seemed to be the dual loss of thrust to both engines, and speculated that perhaps one engine had lost thrust for an unknown reason and that then one of the pilots had accidentally turned off the fuel control switch to the other engine, causing both to lose thrust. Smith was hypothesizing a scenario in which at least one engine had been lost due to a mechanical failure, and an overwhelmed pilot mistakenly deactivated the other engine. The preliminary report, however, was more grim. It rejected all of those possibilities and instead pointed firmly toward a simple but unthinkable event: Both engines were shut down, first one and then the other, by way of the fuel control cutoff switch. In most Boeing airplanes, the flow of fuel to the engines gets activated via two fuel control switches. In the Boeing 787, the jet fuel control switches sit in the main console of the aircraft just below the throttles (which are used to control thrust power). The fuel switches are not easy to engage by accident; they have a built-in spring-loaded locking mechanism that requires anyone using them to first pull up on the knobs, turn them slightly, and then maneuver them up or down into the position you want — a bit like a safety-proof lid on a pill bottle. Additionally, two raised metal guards on either side of the two switches protect against accidental bumping or jostling. There were no historical issues with the switches on this particular 787, and that section of the console had been refurbished as recently as 2023. Additionally, following the crash, other Air India Boeings were inspected, and no fuel switch issues were found with any of them. In a second inspection, Air India reportedly found no issues with the locking mechanisms on the switches either. This crucial context underscores both the reliability of the switches — they were functioning normally with no problems — and the guardrails that were in place to protect against any associated mishaps. With the metal guards and the locking mechanisms, it would be all but impossible for an accident to knock both switches into the cutoff position, especially at the same time. And yet what we know from the preliminary report is that the fuel cutoff switches were somehow switched from 'run' to 'cutoff' — from 'on' to 'off,' effectively. They were moved immediately after the airplane lifted off the ground and reached its maximum takeoff speed of 180 knots, or about 207 miles per hour. In a follow-up analysis video, Smith mapped out the timeline provided in the report, emphasizing that the two switches were turned off in quick succession, just a second apart — a short gap that makes sense, he noted, if someone were to move their hand from one switch to another. Without a fuel supply, the engines immediately lost power. The RAT began supplying hydraulic power to the plane a few seconds after the fuel was cut off. A few seconds after this, one or both pilots realized what had happened. They placed the switches back into the correct position about nine seconds after they were moved. The engines began to restart, but by the time they had recovered, it was already too late. Initial media reports claimed that whichever pilot made the mayday call to air traffic control had stated, 'Thrust not achieved,' as the explanation for the call shortly before losing contact. However, the investigative report didn't include this statement, and recordings from the cockpit have not been made public. What we do know is that according to the preliminary report, 'one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cut off [the fuel]. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.' So was the cutoff done intentionally? The preliminary report has drawn criticism for its vagueness, and for the lack of a direct transcript of the aforementioned moment from the cockpit recorder. The AAIB has also drawn fire for its decision not to issue any safety guidelines as a result of the early stages of its investigation. However, the report was clear that the investigation is ongoing, and multiple pilots associations have cautioned against speculating before all the facts are known. Still, through its inclusion of the cockpit exchange, the preliminary report indicates that one pilot realized the switches had been manually moved and questioned the other pilot about it before moving the switches back into the 'run' position. Given the virtual impossibility of an accidental dual cutoff, and the extreme unlikelihood of a dual engine shutdown being caused by any other issue, the pilot's implied assumption in the moment that his colleague had manually moved the switches himself seems reasonable. Following the report's release, the Wall Street Journal reported that the investigation was intensifying its focus on the captain, 56-year-old Sumeet Sabharwal. As the pilot monitoring, Sabharwal would likely have had his hands free during the takeoff, while the first officer, Clive Kunder, 32, would have been busy actually flying the plane. According to the Journal, the exchange referenced in the preliminary report involved Kunder querying Sabharwal about why the captain had moved the switches. In the following moments, Kunder 'expressed surprise and then panicked' while Sabharwal 'seemed to remain calm.' Of course, without video of the moment, and without knowing more about the closely held details of the investigation thus far, it's difficult to know what the situation in the cockpit truly was. It's possible that Kunder's panic and Sabharwal's calm reflected nothing more than their respective level of career experience. As Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal recently explored, the power imbalance in a cockpit between a senior and a younger or less experienced pilot can have a huge impact on the outcome of a plane mishap. Yet in this case, it seems likely that even in a balanced co-piloting dynamic, nothing could have helped an unwary pilot predict, prevent, or recover from the engine failure. What do we know about the pilots and the airline? Sabharwal was a true veteran pilot, with over 15,000 career flight hours, nearly half of them piloting the 787. As a younger pilot, Kunder had just 3,400 hours of flight time, but over 1,100 of them were on the 787. It's been widely reported that Sabharwal was planning to retire soon to care for his ailing father, who himself was a career aviation ministry official. In reporting after the crash, he has been universally described by friends and colleagues as extremely kind, gentle, reserved, and soft-spoken. Kunder came from a family of pilots, went to flight school in Florida, and reportedly chose piloting over a career in esports because he loved to fly. Following the crash, the Telegraph quoted a source claiming that Sabharwal had struggled with depression and had taken mental health leave from the company. However, Air India's parent company, the Tata Group, contradicted this, with a spokesperson clarifying to the Telegraph that Sabharwal's last medical leave was a bereavement leave in 2022, and emphasizing that 'the preliminary report did not find anything noteworthy' in his recent medical history. If pilots don't get therapy, they could endanger themselves and others while in the air. But if they do get therapy, the airline could ground them. However, it could be very easy for mental health issues in pilots to go undetected and unreported. That's because the strict scrutiny and restrictions placed upon commercial pilots in the wake of the 2015 Germanwings tragedy — in which a pilot locked his co-pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately crashed the plane, killing everyone on board — creates a dangerous catch-22 for pilots: If they don't get thorough and regular mental health treatment, they could be endangering themselves and others when they're in the air. But if they do get mental health treatment, the airline could ground them, perhaps permanently. For pilots who love flying, it's a major risk assessment: Around 1,100 people have been killed because of plane crashes intentionally caused by pilots since 1982. The tragedy comes at a pivotal moment for both Air India and Boeing, which have each been attempting to rebound from criticism. Air India is one of the oldest and formerly one of the most influential airlines in the world, known for the opulence and exceptional artistic style it cultivated throughout the 20th century. After the company was nationalized in the 1950s, however, its once-sterling reputation significantly backslid, until it was finally re-privatized in 2022 and handed off to the Tata Group. The company's attempts to revitalize the airline have included investing billions in readying the company for an expanded fleet and a reentry into the global market — an expansion that could be jeopardized because of the high-profile nature of the June crash. India's civil aviation minister recently announced that the company has additionally received nine safety notices in the last six months. Meanwhile Boeing continues to face criticism in the face of ongoing safety and maintenance concerns, and recently agreed to pay over $1 billion to avoid criminal prosecution over two plane crashes linked to faulty flight control systems that resulted in the deaths of 346 people. While there's no indication yet that anything about the Air India crash was due to a defect in the plane, the optics won't help the beleaguered airline. Perhaps because the stakes are so high, multiple pilot organizations in India as well as a bevy of media commentators have resisted the preliminary report's implication that one of the pilots caused the crash. The Airline Pilots Association of India as well as the Indian Commercial Pilots Association both released statements criticizing the preliminary report and objecting to any presumption of guilt. Others have suggested an undetected issue with the plane might be at fault, or that the AAIB, which issued the preliminary report, might have something to hide. The full investigation into the crash is likely to take at least a year to complete, but given the vagaries of the information obtained from the cockpit, it's uncertain whether we will ever know more than we currently do. Official aviation organizations have cautioned against a rush to judgment until the investigation is completed. Solve the daily Crossword
Vox
2 days ago
- Vox
Everything we know about the Air India crash points to an uncomfortable truth
writes about pop culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute, they're considered an authority on fandom, the internet, and the culture wars. The back of Air India flight 171 is pictured at the site after it crashed in a medical college's residential area near the airport in Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025. Sam Panthaky/AFP via Getty Images With 260 casualties and only one surviving passenger, the Air India 171 crash is one of the deadliest aviation incidents in recent history — and so far it's proving to be one of the most frustratingly opaque. Video of the June 12 incident had previously captured the Boeing 787 taking off successfully from Ahmedabad bound for London, only to rapidly descend, crash into a medical college complex, and explode into flames. The crash killed all but one of the plane's 242 occupants. It also damaged five buildings, killed 19 people on the ground, and injured over 60 more. The weeks that followed saw rampant speculation, AI-generated hoaxes, and conspiracy theories. Finally, on July 11 India's air safety organization, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), issued a preliminary report into the cause of the disaster. The 15-page report pinpointed a dark and disturbing factor as the reason for the crash: Shortly after takeoff, someone or something cut the flow of fuel to both engines, almost simultaneously. This caused a brief but fatal dual engine shutdown that proved impossible for the plane to recover from. The implications of that double shutdown are quite bleak — but there's still a lot we don't know. Vox Culture Culture reflects society. Get our best explainers on everything from money to entertainment to what everyone is talking about online. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. What caused the crash? In the weeks following the tragedy, public speculation about the potential cause ranged from a bird strike to an electrical problem; some suggested fuel contamination, others a malfunction with the wing flaps. Many focused on what seemed to have been an extreme occurrence suggested by the visibility of the Ram Air Turbine (RAT), which deploys when there are engine problems: a total engine failure. Over on YouTube, many analyzed the crash, including some pilots. Among them was Trevor Smith, call sign 'Hoover,' a former military pilot who now flies for a commercial airline. On the side, he runs the YouTube crash analysis channel Pilot Debrief. Following the Air India crash, he emphasized what seemed to be the dual loss of thrust to both engines, and speculated that perhaps one engine had lost thrust for an unknown reason and that then one of the pilots had accidentally turned off the fuel control switch to the other engine, causing both to lose thrust. Smith was hypothesizing a scenario in which at least one engine had been lost due to a mechanical failure, and an overwhelmed pilot mistakenly deactivated the other engine. The preliminary report, however, was more grim. It rejected all of those possibilities and instead pointed firmly toward a simple but unthinkable event: Both engines were shut down, first one and then the other, by way of the fuel control cutoff switch. In most Boeing airplanes, the flow of fuel to the engines gets activated via two fuel control switches. In the Boeing 787, the jet fuel control switches sit in the main console of the aircraft just below the throttles (which are used to control thrust power). The fuel switches are not easy to engage by accident; they have a built-in spring-loaded locking mechanism that requires anyone using them to first pull up on the knobs, turn them slightly, and then maneuver them up or down into the position you want — a bit like a safety-proof lid on a pill bottle. Additionally, two raised metal guards on either side of the two switches protect against accidental bumping or jostling. The console of a Boeing 787. Paige Vickers; Vox/Getty Images There were no historical issues with the switches on this particular 787, and that section of the console had been refurbished as recently as 2023. Additionally, following the crash, other Air India Boeings were inspected, and no fuel switch issues were found with any of them. In a second inspection, Air India reportedly found no issues with the locking mechanisms on the switches either. This crucial context underscores both the reliability of the switches — they were functioning normally with no problems — and the guardrails that were in place to protect against any associated mishaps. With the metal guards and the locking mechanisms, it would be all but impossible for an accident to knock both switches into the cutoff position, especially at the same time. And yet what we know from the preliminary report is that the fuel cutoff switches were somehow switched from 'run' to 'cutoff' — from 'on' to 'off,' effectively. They were moved immediately after the airplane lifted off the ground and reached its maximum takeoff speed of 180 knots, or about 207 miles per hour. In a follow-up analysis video, Smith mapped out the timeline provided in the report, emphasizing that the two switches were turned off in quick succession, just a second apart — a short gap that makes sense, he noted, if someone were to move their hand from one switch to another. Without a fuel supply, the engines immediately lost power. The RAT began supplying hydraulic power to the plane a few seconds after the fuel was cut off. A few seconds after this, one or both pilots realized what had happened. They placed the switches back into the correct position about nine seconds after they were moved. The engines began to restart, but by the time they had recovered, it was already too late. Initial media reports claimed that whichever pilot made the mayday call to air traffic control had stated, 'Thrust not achieved,' as the explanation for the call shortly before losing contact. However, the investigative report didn't include this statement, and recordings from the cockpit have not been made public. What we do know is that according to the preliminary report, 'one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cut off [the fuel]. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.' So was the cutoff done intentionally? The preliminary report has drawn criticism for its vagueness, and for the lack of a direct transcript of the aforementioned moment from the cockpit recorder. The AAIB has also drawn fire for its decision not to issue any safety guidelines as a result of the early stages of its investigation. However, the report was clear that the investigation is ongoing, and multiple pilots associations have cautioned against speculating before all the facts are known. Still, through its inclusion of the cockpit exchange, the preliminary report indicates that one pilot realized the switches had been manually moved and questioned the other pilot about it before moving the switches back into the 'run' position. Given the virtual impossibility of an accidental dual cutoff, and the extreme unlikelihood of a dual engine shutdown being caused by any other issue, the pilot's implied assumption in the moment that his colleague had manually moved the switches himself seems reasonable. Following the report's release, the Wall Street Journal reported that the investigation was intensifying its focus on the captain, 56-year-old Sumeet Sabharwal. As the pilot monitoring, Sabharwal would likely have had his hands free during the takeoff, while the first officer, Clive Kunder, 32, would have been busy actually flying the plane. According to the Journal, the exchange referenced in the preliminary report involved Kunder querying Sabharwal about why the captain had moved the switches. In the following moments, Kunder 'expressed surprise and then panicked' while Sabharwal 'seemed to remain calm.' Of course, without video of the moment, and without knowing more about the closely held details of the investigation thus far, it's difficult to know what the situation in the cockpit truly was. It's possible that Kunder's panic and Sabharwal's calm reflected nothing more than their respective level of career experience. As Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal recently explored, the power imbalance in a cockpit between a senior and a younger or less experienced pilot can have a huge impact on the outcome of a plane mishap. Yet in this case, it seems likely that even in a balanced co-piloting dynamic, nothing could have helped an unwary pilot predict, prevent, or recover from the engine failure. What do we know about the pilots and the airline? Sabharwal was a true veteran pilot, with over 15,000 career flight hours, nearly half of them piloting the 787. As a younger pilot, Kunder had just 3,400 hours of flight time, but over 1,100 of them were on the 787. It's been widely reported that Sabharwal was planning to retire soon to care for his ailing father, who himself was a career aviation ministry official. In reporting after the crash, he has been universally described by friends and colleagues as extremely kind, gentle, reserved, and soft-spoken. Kunder came from a family of pilots, went to flight school in Florida, and reportedly chose piloting over a career in esports because he loved to fly. Following the crash, the Telegraph quoted a source claiming that Sabharwal had struggled with depression and had taken mental health leave from the company. However, Air India's parent company, the Tata Group, contradicted this, with a spokesperson clarifying to the Telegraph that Sabharwal's last medical leave was a bereavement leave in 2022, and emphasizing that 'the preliminary report did not find anything noteworthy' in his recent medical history. If pilots don't get therapy, they could endanger themselves and others while in the air. But if they do get therapy, the airline could ground them. However, it could be very easy for mental health issues in pilots to go undetected and unreported. That's because the strict scrutiny and restrictions placed upon commercial pilots in the wake of the 2015 Germanwings tragedy — in which a pilot locked his co-pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately crashed the plane, killing everyone on board — creates a dangerous catch-22 for pilots: If they don't get thorough and regular mental health treatment, they could be endangering themselves and others when they're in the air. But if they do get mental health treatment, the airline could ground them, perhaps permanently. For pilots who love flying, it's a major risk assessment: Around 1,100 people have been killed because of plane crashes intentionally caused by pilots since 1982. The tragedy comes at a pivotal moment for both Air India and Boeing, which have each been attempting to rebound from criticism. Air India is one of the oldest and formerly one of the most influential airlines in the world, known for the opulence and exceptional artistic style it cultivated throughout the 20th century. After the company was nationalized in the 1950s, however, its once-sterling reputation significantly backslid, until it was finally re-privatized in 2022 and handed off to the Tata Group. The company's attempts to revitalize the airline have included investing billions in readying the company for an expanded fleet and a reentry into the global market — an expansion that could be jeopardized because of the high-profile nature of the June crash. India's civil aviation minister recently announced that the company has additionally received nine safety notices in the last six months. Meanwhile Boeing continues to face criticism in the face of ongoing safety and maintenance concerns, and recently agreed to pay over $1 billion to avoid criminal prosecution over two plane crashes linked to faulty flight control systems that resulted in the deaths of 346 people. While there's no indication yet that anything about the Air India crash was due to a defect in the plane, the optics won't help the beleaguered airline. Perhaps because the stakes are so high, multiple pilot organizations in India as well as a bevy of media commentators have resisted the preliminary report's implication that one of the pilots caused the crash. The Airline Pilots Association of India as well as the Indian Commercial Pilots Association both released statements criticizing the preliminary report and objecting to any presumption of guilt. Others have suggested an undetected issue with the plane might be at fault, or that the AAIB, which issued the preliminary report, might have something to hide.
