'They might’ve had a chance at 1,500 feet...': Aviation expert's chilling theory on Air India crash

As investigators sift through debris and recover crucial flight data from the Air India Dreamliner crash that killed 241 people in Ahmedabad, one veteran aviator is offering a chilling, highly detailed analysis of what may have gone wrong in those final seconds. Captain Steve, a former Boeing 777 pilot and aviation YouTuber, says the signs don’t point to an engine failure—but a catastrophic loss of lift, possibly due to a simple but fatal cockpit error.

In a 17-minute video posted to his channel, Captain Steve dissects footage of the doomed Boeing 787-8. “What we do know is this,” he begins. “The landing gear is still down. This airplane is well beyond the point where that gear should’ve been raised—usually around 50 feet after takeoff.” He notes that both engines appear to be functioning normally. “No flames, no sparks. Nothing to suggest a power failure,” he says.

Much public speculation has centered on dual engine failure, but Steve dismisses this as unlikely. “Could both engines have been taken out by a flock of birds? Possible—but we’d expect to see smoke, fire, or debris. There’s none,” he explains. Another theory—fuel contamination—doesn’t fit either. “The engines showed no signs of sputtering on the roll. Everything up to rotation looked textbook.”

So what brought down the aircraft?

Steve’s analysis centers on a critical moment just after takeoff, when the aircraft achieves positive rate—indicating liftoff—and the command is given: “Gear up.” But in his view, that may be where the fatal error occurred. “What if the co-pilot grabbed the flap handle instead of the gear handle?” he asks. “If the flaps were retracted instead of the gear, you’d lose all that added lift. The gear would stay down, dragging. The aircraft would be heavy, slow, and suddenly unable to climb.”

Steve emphasizes how improbable such a mistake would be—yet, in high-stress, high-workload environments, even experienced crews can err. “You're looking outside, watching the runway fall away. One wrong motion, and everything changes.”

In the video, he points out how the 787’s nose lifts to about 2.5 degrees, then should rise further as flaps and gear behave correctly. But here, “the gear never moves. The wings barely flex. That’s a visual sign—very little lift is being generated.” Soon after, the nose begins to pitch down. “That’s the airplane trying to create more airflow over the wings to compensate. But it’s too slow, too heavy. The lift is gone.”

The aircraft appears to enter a power-on stall, the engines screaming but the wings unable to sustain flight. “They might’ve had a chance at 1,500 feet, maybe even 1,000, to recover,” Steve says. “But they never got there.”

He stops short of declaring this the definitive cause but says, “To me, this looks like an improper flap setting—possibly a misidentification of the gear lever.”

“It’s heartbreaking,” Steve concludes. “These pilots may have done everything they could. But in those few seconds, the margin for error was razor-thin. And one wrong move may have cost 241 lives.”