Days after the crash of an Air India flight, former SriLankan Airlines pilot Captain Sri Segaram said that those concerned can speculate on the possible reasons at this hour but the flight data recorder (FDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) will give the real picture—whether there were any system warnings, whether the engines were delivering full thrust, flap settings, everything.
In an interview with Daily Mirror, he said that until then, one can only go by informed assumptions. He said it’s a tragic, freak event.
“We, in the aviation community hope that once the facts are out, we can learn from it and ensure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.
Asked about main possibilities at this stage—pending the black box analysis, he said one possibility is mechanical or technical failure.
“Since there was no bad weather reported, the accident would not have been due to weather,” he said.
He said, “Whatever I’m saying is based on my experience in aviation—that’s number one. Number two, it’s from the video evidence I’ve seen, which is from amateur footage. So what I’m saying is just what I feel might have happened. I could be right, or I could be wrong. The black box has been recovered, and along with that, the cockpit voice recorder will also be examined.
So, they’ll come out with the actual reason for the crash quite soon—because there’s pressure from Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer; pressure from General Electric, which makes the engines; and also, Indian aviation is a very large and important industry. People are anxious to know what really happened. It’s a very sad incident. And it’s also a freak incident, because the Dreamliner, the Boeing 787, is a very reliable aircraft,”
Daily Mirror | Kelum Bandara
