Aviation experts say a newly uncovered video of the devastating Air India crash offers chilling new clues — with one pilot claiming it proves the jet suffered a catastrophic power failure moments after take-off.
The harrowing incident saw the London-bound Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner plunge into a residential area in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, killing 241 passengers on board and another 38 people on the ground. Now, commercial airline pilot and crash analyst Steve Schreiber has pointed to fresh footage as a key breakthrough in understanding what went wrong.
Mr Schreiber — known as “Captain Steve” to his online followers — believes the new, clearer video shows the doomed aircraft suffered a dual engine failure, sealing its fate in what has become one of India’s deadliest aviation disasters.
The plane had just lifted off when it began losing height rapidly, before erupting into a fireball over homes in a densely populated area. Just one of the 242 people on board survived the horror crash.
Initially, Mr Schreiber believed a simple cockpit error — possibly the co-pilot retracting the landing gear too early — might have led to the disaster. But the new footage has caused him to rethink that theory entirely.
Speaking on his YouTube channel Captain Steeeve, the pilot said a “tiny detail” seen in the video is a “total gamechanger” — and could be the smoking gun investigators have been searching for.
Beneath the aircraft’s right wing, Mr Schreiber spotted what he described as a “protrusion on the belly of the aircraft”, with a “little grey dot” just below it. According to the pilot, this is a clear sign that the plane’s Ram Air Turbine (RAT) deployed.
“Many aeroplanes have it,” he said. “It is just behind the wing on the right side of the aeroplane, there is a little door that holds it in. It looks like a little Evinrude motor, it’s a little two-bladed prop. The purpose is to provide electrical and hydraulic pressure for the aircraft on an extreme emergency.”
On a Boeing 787, Mr Schreiber said the RAT is automatically triggered by one of three scenarios: massive electrical failure, massive hydraulic failure, or most critically, dual engine failure.
“That little grey dot is the RAT,” he explained. “The protrusion is the door that opened to allow the RAT to come down.”
He added that the sound captured in the video further backs up his theory. “A RAT makes a distinctive sound, it sounds like a propeller aeroplane going by, or a real high-pitched squeal. It is basically spinning at the speed of sound to produce the energy, electrical and hydraulic that it needs to,” he said.
“If you weren’t looking at it, it sounded like a single-engine prop aeroplane just flew by.”
Originally designed to assist aircraft at cruising altitude during engine failure, the RAT isn’t typically expected to activate at low altitudes — but Schreiber says its deployment in this case is a grim indicator.
“It is not designed for an aeroplane at 400–500ft. But it is evidence for us,” he said.
Summing up his analysis, Mr Schreiber concluded: “It is evidence for us it was dual engine failure, most likely. It could have been electrical issue, it could have been hydraulic issue, it could have been either one of that. But I think the fact the aeroplane is mushing out the sky gives the idea it was a dual engine failure.”