Uttarkashi chopper hit cable during emergency landing, crashed: Preliminary probe
During its attempted landing on NH 34 near Gangnani in Uttarkashi, the chopper struck an overhead cable, resulting in a crash that killed the pilot and five passengers. Eventually, it fell into a gorge about 250 feet deep. Despite extensive damage to the helicopter, belonging to AeroTrans Services Private Limited, there was no fire reported at the scene. The crash site has since been secured for further examination of the wreckage. The AAIB has collected crucial mechanical and electrical components for detailed analysis.After taking off from Sahastradhara helipad in Dehradun, the chopper was heading to Kharsali helipad in Yamunotri. Four passengers on board were from Mumbai, while two others were from Andhra Pradesh.- EndsMust Watch
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First Post
a day ago
- First Post
Air India crash: How to spin-doctor and peddle narratives, the Western way
Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore used to terrorise villainous Western media by suing them in his courts. They learned to toe the line read more There has been a virtual masterclass lately in the creation and dissemination of biased narratives. Not only in the case of the ill-fated Air India 171 (Boeing 787, June 12, 2025) that crashed, but also in some other, unrelated instances. The age-old practices of 'truth by repeated assertion' and 'dubious circular references' as well as 'strategic silence' have all been deployed in full force. The bottom line with the Air India flight: there is reasonable doubt about whether there was mechanical/software failure and/or sabotage or possible pilot error. Any or all of these caused both engines to turn off in flight. But the way the spin-doctors have spun it, it is now 'official' that the commanding pilot was suicidal and turned off the fuel switch. Boeing, the plane maker, and General Electric, the engine maker, are blameless. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD This is, alas, not surprising. It is in the interests of Western MNCs to limit reputational damage and monetary loss related to their products. They do massive marketing by unleashing their PR agencies. We also saw how they protect themselves in other instances. A leaked Pfizer contract for their Covid vaccine insisted that if anything happened, it was the user's problem, not Pfizer's: there was no indemnity. Incidentally, a report on July 19 said that the Pfizer Covid vaccine can lead to severe vision problems. Oh, sorry, no indemnity. What is deplorable in the Air India case is that the AAIB, the Indian entity investigating the disaster, chose to release a half-baked preliminary report with enough ambiguity that a case could be (and definitely was) built up against the poor dead pilots. Any marketing person could have read the report and told them that it would be used to blame the pilots and absolve the manufacturers. Besides, the AAIB report was released late night on a Friday, India time, which meant that the Western media had all of one working day to do the spin-doctoring, which they did with remarkable gusto. Meanwhile, the Indian media slept. Whose decision was this? Clearly, Indian babus need a remedial course in public relations if this was mere incompetence. Of course, if it was intentional, that would be even worse. There is a pattern. In earlier air accidents, such as the Jeju Air crash involving a Boeing 737-800 in South Korea in December, the pilots were blamed. In accidents involving Lion Air (Boeing 737 Max 8, 2018), China Airlines (737-200, 1989), Flydubai (737-800, 2016), ditto. I am beginning to believe that a lot of Asian pilots are poorly trained and/or suicidal. Ditto with the F-35 that fell into the ocean off Japan. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Truth by repeated assertion is a powerful force for gaslighting the gullible. I wonder what excuses we'll hear about the Delta Airlines Boeing 767 whose engine caught fire in the air after take-off from LAX on July 20. The pilots didn't die, so they will speak up. Besides, they were Westerners. I am eagerly awaiting the spin on this. I also noticed with grim amusement how the BBC, WSJ, Bloomberg, and Reuters, and so on were busy quoting each other to validate their assertions. This is a standard tactic that India's 'distorians' (see Utpal Kumar's powerful book Eminent Distorians) have perfected: B will quote third-hand hearsay from A, then C will quote B, D will quote C, and before you know it, the hearsay has become the truth. But if you wind it back from D to C to B to A it becomes, 'I hear someone told someone that xyz happened.' Out of thin air, then. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD There is also the lovely tactic of strategic silence. It has been used to un-person people who ask inconvenient questions. It has also been used to defenestrate inconvenient news. Just days ago, under the Deep State-installed new regime in Syria, hundreds of minority Druze were brutally massacred. There was video on X of armed men in uniform forcing Druze men to jump off tall buildings, and desecrating their shrines. Similarly, there is a brutal reign of terror, rape, murder, and thuggery against Hindus, Buddhists, and others under the Deep State-blessed regime of Mohammed Yunus in Bangladesh: a clear genocide. Neither Syria nor Bangladesh gets any headlines. There are no loud human-rights protests as in the case of Gaza. This is not news. It is un-news. 'Manufacturing Consent' all the way. India is particularly vulnerable to this gaslighting because Indians consume a lot of English-language 'news.' Scholars have long noted how the US public has been maintained in a state of ignorance so they could be easily manipulated. The same is true of the Indian middle class. So, there is yet another reason to do less in English. Fooling, say, the Chinese or Japanese public is a lot more difficult. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The fact is that even though Indians may be literate in English, they do not understand the context and the subtext of what is fed to them by the likes of The Economist, NPR, The Financial Times, The New York Times, etc. The best way I can explain this is the 100+5 analogy in the Mahabharata: they may fight with each other on domestic matters, but Anglosphere and Deep State are in cahoots when it comes to international matters. Things are both getting better and getting worse. On the one hand, social media and its imprint on generative AI mean that it is ever easier to propagate fake news (in addition to deepfake audio and video, of course). On the other hand, despite the problem of charlatans and paid agents provocateurs getting lots of eyeballs, the large number of Indians on social media may push back against the worst kinds of blood libel against India and Indians, of which there's plenty these days, often created by bots from 'friendly' countries. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD This is a serious matter indeed. One solution is to do a version of the Great Chinese Firewall and ban wholesale the worst offenders. Indeed, a few of the vilest handles have been ejected from X. However, the pusillanimity with which notorious Pakistani handles were unbanned, then re-banned after outrage, shows there's something rotten in the Information Ministry. Almost exactly the same as the unbanning of Pakistani cricketers, then rebanning after outrage. Is there anybody in charge? Information warfare is insidious. Going back to the Air India case, I think the families of the maligned pilots should sue for gigantic sums for libel and defamation. The sad state of the Indian judiciary may mean that, unfortunately, this will not go far. However, there is precedent: Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore used to terrorise villainous Western media by suing them in his courts. They learned to toe the line. If this tactic does not work, India should eject the hostile media. The Indian market is increasingly important to Western media (not vice versa) because soon there will be more English-reading consumers in India than in the Five Eyes Anglosphere. I should say that in quotes because as I said above, most Indians are blissfully unaware of the hidden agendas, and naively believe them. But 'Judeo-Christian' culture is very different from dharmic. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD I keep getting emails from The New York Times with tempting offers to subscribe to them for something really cheap like Rs. 25 a month. They need Indian readers. I have been shouting from the rooftops for years that one of these charlatan media houses needs to be kicked out, harshly, with 24 hours' notice to wind up and leave. As in the Asian proverb, 'Kill the chicken to scare the monkeys.' The monkeys will notice, and behave. Otherwise, the information warfare is just going to get worse. The writer has been a conservative columnist for over 25 years. His academic interest is innovation. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Time of India
It's The Report, Not The Reporting
AAIB's first findings on AI 171 were presented in a way that encouraged speculations on pilot action. Credible alternative possibilities centered on machine malfunction were not given due attention
News18
2 days ago
- News18
British Families Of Air India Crash Victims Allege They Received Wrong Bodies: Report
Last Updated: Some families of British victims of the Air India crash reportedly received wrongly identified remains. However, no similar repatriation errors were reported by families in India. Families of British Air India crash victims were sent wrong bodies, while some received commingled remnants of more than one person killed in the June 12 incident, the Daily Mail has claimed, even though no such blunder was reported in India. According to the report, some families have claimed the bodies of their loved ones were wrongly identified before being flown to their country. In some cases, families also received commingled remnants of more than one person, which had to be separated before the internment could go ahead. Two instances of mistaken identity have so far come to light, according to the report. It claimed the revelation was made after Inner West London coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox sought to verify the identities of the repatriated Britons by matching their DNA with samples provided by the families. Quoting aviation lawyer James Healy-Pratt, who represents many of the British families, the report stated that at least 12 of the British victims of the Air India crash were repatriated. Pratt told the publication that his team was waiting for a formal response from Air India and its emergency response contractors, Kenyons International Emergency Services, on the same. Air India flight AI 171, operated with Boeing 787-8, en route to London Gatwick, crashed soon after takeoff from Ahmedabad on June 12, killing 241 of the 242 passengers onboard and another 19 on the ground. All victims were identified, and their bodies were handed over to the families for the last rites. On Tuesday, Air India said it has completed the 'precautionary" inspection of the locking mechanism of the fuel control switch (FCS) on its Boeing 787 and 737 aircraft fleet, and no issues were found. Aviation safety regulator DGCA last week directed airlines to inspect the fuel switch locking system in their Boeing 787 and 737 planes by July 21 after the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) said in its preliminary report that fuel switches were cut off before the Air India plane crash last month. In its preliminary report on the Boeing 787-8 crash, AAIB said the fuel supply to both engines of the plane was cut off within a gap of one second, causing confusion in the cockpit soon after takeoff. Boeing 787s are part of Air India's fleet, while B737s are operated by its low-cost subsidiary Air India Express. Besides these, other domestic carriers, IndiGo, Spicejet and Akasa, also have these types of aircraft in their operations. With this, the two airlines, Air India and Air India Express, have complied with the directives of the DGCA issued on July 14, Air India said in the statement. In 2018, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) flagged the potential disengagement of the fuel control switch locking feature on certain models of Boeing aircraft, including 787s and 737s. It was mentioned in a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB), but there was no airworthiness directive, indicating that the issue was not a safety concern. Air India has a total of 33 wide-body Boeing 787s, while Air India Express has around 75 narrow-body 737s. view comments Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
