YouTuber Gaurav Taneja, aka Flying Beast, simulated the recent Air India 171 crash, and suggested that overloading may be one of the contributing factors behind it.

YouTuber Gaurav Taneja, aka Flying Beast, suggested that overloading might be one of the reasons behind the recent Air India Flight 171 crash in Ahmedabad, which claimed the lives of 270 people. In a new video posted on his YouTube channel, which has nearly 10 million subscribers, he simulated the crash under different settings, and debunked several theories around it. At first, he had suggested that a dual engine failure could be the only reason behind a Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashing in the manner that Flight 171 did. In the new video, he seemed to point in the direction of pilot error, combined with several other issues.

Carrying out further analysis of the dual engine failure theory, he conducted a simulation. “I was fixated on this reason until today evening. In the sim, everything was falling into place. After takeoff, we killed both engines at 100 feet,” he said, adding that he made the aircraft ‘a little heavy’. He said, “Usually, this aircraft is 62 tonnes, but considering that it was a long flight to London, I’ve made it 70 tonnes.” After conducting the first simulation, he said, “It was scary. I froze. There was nothing that you could do. What could you do? All you can do is pray and watch the ground come at you.”

Citing the video of the crash, he said that the aircraft’s nose seemed to tilt up in the moments ahead of the crash, which suggests that the pilot made a last-ditch effort to pull up. “It’s very scary. You have 10 seconds, basically. You can do nothing. You pull the nose up to avoid a heavy impact, and perhaps save a few lives on the ground. It fell like a rock on the ground,” he said. He conducted another simulation with an even heavier aircraft, and discovered that, like Flight 171, it didn’t take off at the normal stage. “I was terrified, I could see the runway about to end. “Because of the late liftoff, the pilots’ were too distracted to pull the landing gear up,” he speculated.

In the same video, Taneja suggested that the pilots aboard the aircraft might’ve been startled when the first engine failed during takeoff, and were left with no choice but to proceed because the engine failure happened after the point of no return on the runway. Once the aircraft was airborne, they mistakenly killed the second engine, and forgot to pull the landing gear up. Previously, Taneja had defended the pilots against any criticism, saying that they are the easiest people to blame in such events, because they aren’t around to defend themselves. He has also said that both engines of a Boeing 787 failing is practically unheard of.

He said, “They were distracted. They were supposed to pull up the landing gear at around 100 feet. Now, listen carefully. They climbed for 100-150 feet with a damaged engine, and forgot to pull the landing gear up. In the Boeing 787, pilots are required to follow ‘memory items’ in the event of an engine failure. When they hit 400 feet, the pilot ‘flying’ pulled the thrust idle switch for the faulty engine, and the pilot ‘monitoring’ pulled the fuel control switch off for the wrong engine… One engine was damaged on the ground, the other engine they killed themselves.”

In the wake of several flight cancellations following the Flight 171 disaster on June 12, Taneja praised pilots for putting their foot down and refusing to fly potentially unsafe machines. On Saturday, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) ordered immediate action against three senior Air India officials following “serious and repeated violations,” the Hindustan Times reported.