Opinion
By Martha Kehagias
You may have seen a headline flying around. Something like: "Unbelievable: Fault in the pilot’s seat caused the Air India Boeing crash – It slipped backward and lost control – See the report and the black box recordings."
Then came: "A mechanical failure in the pilot’s seat at the moment of takeoff appears to be the main cause of the crash of Air India’s Boeing 787 on flight AI-171, according to the findings of the preliminary report currently being drafted by India’s Independent Aircraft Accident Investigation Authority (AAIB), which is expected to be released in the coming days."
Some sources even claimed the preliminary report had been released today, 25 June 2025. Yes, you read that right. (There’s a screenshot, in Greek. I’ve seen it.)
I couldn’t believe it. It was incredible, and shocking. But I wasn’t about to just take some other newspaper’s word for it. I had to find the source myself. And honestly, it wasn’t that hard. I went straight to India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau. Parts of the site are in Hindi, but a lot of it is in English, and it's easy to navigate. Headings like "Safety Data," "Accidents," and "Serious Incidents/Incidents" guide you right where you need to go. The most recent report I could find covered an incident from 5 December 2024. I double-checked. Preliminary reports, by rule, can take up to three months to be released. And here we are, just four days after the crash. So unless something changed drastically, this wasn’t adding up.
Still, I thought maybe I was missing something. Maybe the report had been posted elsewhere. I dug up another article with similar details, which wasn’t hard. A lot of online sources just copy and paste the same information and slap it on their sites. But no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find the original source, and that really bugged me.
Here’s where it gets weird. One source quoted an “expert”, a commercial aviation captain and, believe it or not, mayor of not one, but three towns in Greece. (Yes, really. I have the screenshot.)
This Mr. Mayor said that in his “expert” opinion, there were three possible scenarios involving a fault in the pilot’s seat, and that “...the preliminary report on the causes of the crash will be released any day now.”
Will be released?
WILL be released??
I thought it had already been released. You know, June 25th, remember?
At that point, I had to dig deeper. I scrolled down to the user comments under one of the articles. “Bogus article – Journalist from Lidl...” “Completely wrong… at least you're good at ChatGPT.” “No source for the article!! It’s blatantly obvious that it’s a reproduction of some fake article, and nearly 24 hours later, you still refuse to take it down!”
Whoa. What was going on here? At least I wasn’t the only one asking questions. Other people were skeptical, too. And finally, I verified it. Verified that it’s fake, that is. According to Aviacionline, a Spanish-language aviation site with a solid reputation, this story, which has made the rounds in Greece and Cyprus, is a hoax. The real investigation is still in its early stages, with no cause yet determined. The report making headlines was a fabrication, lifted from an entirely unrelated aviation incident involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
And yes, some major Greek and Cypriot outlets picked it up. (I’ve got screenshots, just in case they quietly took them down.) Do a quick Google search in Greek, and you’ll find the story repeated over and over. A neat little feedback loop of misinformation.
This little afternoon project spent tracking sources, digging through websites, and trying to make sense of what actually happened reminded me of a dear mentor of mine, now passed, my old Anthropology professor. He used to say, “What’s rule #1? Never trust your informant.” I've held that quote with me all these years and, I must admit, I smile a little every time I think of it.
