I am writing this article to express my deep dismay and anguish at a series of articles that appeared in prominent mainstream media by a commentator, Capt Mohan Ranganathan, after the tragic AI-171 accident. Capt Ranganathan is a veteran airline pilot and instructor now retired for many years. In the absence of in-house domain experts, it is understandable that media would seek out subject matter experts in the wake of air accidents. That there was a void of information from official sources in the wake of this tragedy is also well understood. But there are ethical and professional red lines this commentator has crossed which merit a rebuttal in the interest of public safety.

Article 1, June 18, 2025: ‘A chance to rebuild the trust, restore faith in air travel’

In his first article on June 18 (six days after the crash), Capt Ranganathan wrote about TRP-hungry media channels and YouTubers who were “going overboard with theories about what caused the accident”. He should introspect if his opinion assuaged or compounded the general anxiety. He complained about rumours that are “flooding WhatsApp groups” and why “Boeing needs to address them” given the high stakes and “reliability of the Dreamliner”. It is not known on what basis he has given a clean chit to the Boeing Company so early in the process. His further writings only reveal a confirmation bias against the pilots who are no longer around to defend themselves.

After bemoaning wild speculation around the Dreamliner in the opening lines, Capt Ranganathan went on to float multiple pet theories of his own about aircraft performance calculations, runway length, takeoff run, bird hit, debris ingestion, critical engine failure, etc.—presumably after watching a grainy CCTV footage on loop. To buffer his unfounded theories, he offered an old anecdote from 1986 where an Indian Airlines B737 rejected takeoff after rotation (RTO) [Editor: An RTO is an emergency procedure for stopping an aircraft after it has commenced its take-off roll, using the remaining part of the runway to bring the plane to a halt.] His grouse that the crew were “crucified” for ‘rejecting’ takeoff ... seems to underpin his contempt for the airline and infatuation with Boeing planes. To be clear, rejecting a takeoff after rotation is not ‘Hobson’s Choice’ as Ranganathan made it out to be. It is attempted mass suicide...

Article 2: June 27, 2025: ‘Delay in revealing details about Air India crash is causing anxiety’

The focus of his second op-ed was that “flying is safe, and it is the system that is at fault”. On the face of it, nothing seems amiss with this statement per se, especially in India where it is fashionable to blame everything on the “system”. Flying is, by an order of magnitude, the safest mode of transportation in the world today. But arguments offered by the author fly in the face of the very hypothesis he advances.

By this time, basic data from flight trackers and confirmation from official sources had blown a hole in Ranganathan’s ‘insufficient runway length’ theory. But he pressed on, mistaking apparent shortening of takeoff roll due to CCTV camera angle with lengthening of takeoff roll, using junior school-level calculations. What’s worse, he postulated that the aircraft had run out of runway and entered the overrun area, ingesting sand, gravel and birds. The rest of his second article circled around pilot-shaming, using basics that would not elude even a trainee in flight school. The only purpose that emerges from his accusations is his ill-founded belief that AI-171 crew should have done what a reckless pilot did in 1986 — reject takeoff after rotation. This is criminal misinformation being peddled as expert opinion.

Article 3, July 13, 2025: ‘Air India crash: Report points to human intervention as cause of crash’

The release of AAIB’s AI-171 preliminary report in the wee hours of July 12 demolished all frivolous theories advanced by Ranganathan till then. Runway length, aircraft performance, load and trim, critical speeds (V1, V2, Vr), bird activity, etc. have all been detailed in the report, maybe to the disappointment of the veteran analyst. In his July 13 opinion piece, he bemoans “thirty days of misinformation” that has “increased anxiety among passengers and stress levels of operating crew on Dreamliners worldwide”. There is little self-awareness, if any, of his own egregious contribution to the anxiety by running a misinformation campaign vilifying dead pilots as incompetent, even suicidal.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation started the process of transitioning pilot licences from paper to smart cards around 2021. Capt Ranganathan cherry picked minutiae like date of issue of airline transport pilot license (ATPL), pilot experience, on-type experience, aircraft rescue and fire-fighting (ARRF), etc. to discredit the prelim report and salvage something out of his now demolished hypotheses.

Raising suspicion on pilot’s health without any evidence

It is unfortunate that the AI-171 preliminary report raised more questions than it answered. The legal requirement is that such report bear only factual information available at the time of release. Maybe unintentional, but the wording of the AI-171 preliminary report, its apparent clean chit to GE (engines) and Boeing, and selective quoting of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) has shoehorned the discourse towards the most simplistic explanation of pilot error.

Having run out of his quota of technical “gotchas”, Ranganathan touched a new low with unfounded insinuations against the dead pilot based on what can only be described as “crew room talk”. In an interview to NDTV, he pushed the conversation to dark corners of pilot suicide, even raising questions about the pilot’s medical history. The source of this unhinged rant was WhatsApp University-level “I saw somewhere” and “some Air India pilots told me” innuendo. It is grossly incorrect and unethical to spread canards about the pilot’s health when he is no longer around to defend himself. But egged on by eager TV hosts and a misplaced sense of concern for pilot stress and flight duty time limitations (FDTL), Ranganathan breached all norms of ‘expert’ behaviour in the aftermath of a terrible disaster.

By this time, the world media had picked up the air waves and the damage was done. Even without his unsolicited advice, the AAIB is legally bound to investigate all vectors, including pilot sabotage, with the mountain of evidence that will be uncovered and analysed in coming weeks. To mislead the audience at a nascent stage of the investigation with unfounded rumours about pilot actions or mental health is unconscionable. It will give a long rope to the usual suspects, besides complicating the convoluted web of insurance and compensation that grieving families have to navigate going forward.

All sides must be heard

Yes, all sides must be heard. But in this feeding frenzy for exclusives, we should not lose sight of morals and ethics if we are to be taken as a serious aviation country. Devastated families who have lost loved ones deserve much more than casual commentary. In an age of social media where anyone with a virtual handle can peddle misinformation, we look up to senior professionals  to provide clarity and deep insights. So when they come to the debate with antiquated “in my time” perspectives and unfair speculation, the media should think twice before platforming them.

Complex systems and interactive complexity

A modern airplane like the B787 is a complex “system of systems”. Pilots flying such planes—indeed anybody operating complex systems like these—may have to deal with what Charles Perrow described in his book Normal Accidents – Living with high risk technologies (1984) as “interactive complexity”. Multiple and often confusing failures can sometimes interact with each other in unexpected ways, producing failure modes that are not only unanticipated, but also unanticipatable. Then there is the more widely used James Reason’s ‘Swiss Cheese Model’ of accident causation. A human pilot remains our most resilient defence in the fragile intersection of pilot-airplane-automation that obtains on the flight deck of a modern aircraft today. Read a fascinating piece outlining this aspect with a contemporary example here.

Investigations into AI-171 will have to deal with many knowns and unknowns. It is best that commentators do not reduce it to the simplistic denomination of pilot error (a term replaced by human error for many years now). Also, topics like mental health and its role in the cockpit are far too serious to be casually bandied about without evidence, however seized by cognitive bias one may be. Let us not do to AI-171 what the media did to the Sushant Singh Rajput case.

We locked cockpits after 9/11 and Germanwings. Now it is time for responsible media to shut the door on conspiracy theorists and irresponsible experts.

K.P. Sanjeev Kumar is a full-time aviator and part-time writer. 

This article was first published on his website  and has been edited for style by The Wire.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.