Verdict: Misleading. The video on those reels is an old clip of another pilot introducing his mother as a special passenger on a flight. It has no link to the AI171 that recently crashed.
Full Text
On June 12, 2025, tragedy struck when an Air India flight, AI-171, crashed shortly after takeoff from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad. En route to London, the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner went down moments after issuing a distress call.
The aircraft lost altitude and went down near a less-populated area on the city’s outskirts, narrowly avoiding a major disaster. Sadly, reports from various media outlets suggest that only one person, out of the 242 on board, survived the fatal crash.
Fatalities include pilots, crew members, passengers, and other people on the ground. The incident has sent shockwaves across India’s aviation industry and the global aviation community, raising questions about safety protocols.
A CNN report details how it happened, and all investigations are ongoing. Air India, India’s flag carrier, also provided timely updates.
Many videos flooded social media, purporting to be pieces or details from the Air India 171 flight. One such video was shared in a reel by the Facebook page Tessy TV, which generated over 240 likes, 74 comments, and approximately 139 shares after being shared.
Nze Jane Nkechi also claimed that a passenger recorded a video of the pilot of the crashed plane announcing his mother as a special passenger on the flight before the accident, adding hashtags #boeing787, #boeinglovers, and #plancrash as well as #indian
Another page shared the same video, Current Affairs Media Agency, a news and media company with over 49,000 followers, with the same impression, showing moments before the accident when the pilot announced the presence of his mother. It generated a lot of comments, with some believing and others being sceptical. This is their shared reel. For this research, the posts have been archived.
This video was also shared on a YouTube short with the caption “#Ahmedabad Air India captain speech before crash.”
Verification
First, this researcher used InVid’s built-in tools to break the video down into keyframes, enabling us to obtain apparent frames that can be subjected to a reverse image search.
A reverse image search using Google Lens led us to several posts made several days before the crash.
One such post took us to an Instagram page, Calcutta Times, which had posted the same video weeks before the incident. In that post, the page named the pilot Aswath Pushpan, who announced his mother as a special passenger on the flight. The accompanying text said, “From boarding gate hugs to in-flight love.”
In a month-old video that has become viral, pilot Aswath Pushpan (@ashhwathh) surprises his mother with a heartfelt announcement before takeoff. The emotional moment has garnered over 8 million views, touching hearts worldwide.”
Another Instagram page, India without Politics, also made the same post on April 26, 2025, several days before the crash on June 12, 2025, and could not have been linked to the plane crash events.
A shot of the Instagram post from India Without Politics.
The Economic Times’ online news platform, headquartered in New Delhi, India, published a story about the events in the original video on April 18, 2025, more than six weeks before the actual plane crash.
In all those original publications, the pilot’s name announcing his mother on the flight was mentioned. The Instagram page, India Without Politics, even tagged the pilot.
The researcher ran a query on Aswath Pushpan, the pilot named in the video. His LinkedIn account confirmed that he is a pilot.
Then we also clicked on the tagged account in India Without Politics’ post. It took us to his profile on Instagram. It shows the video posted on March 14, 2025, with the caption “Cleared for takeoff—with the most special passenger on board!” Welcome on board, mom.” That post garnered over 326,000 likes and more than 1,400 comments.
Again, we searched for the pilot’s name of the crashed plane to see if it matches Aswath Pushpan. Sources reveal that Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, 55, commanded the aircraft, and First Officer Clive Kunder, 32, who both perished in the crash.
Reputable news outlets, The New York Times and The Guardian, have mentioned these names as the pilot and co-pilot of the crashed flight.
The two pilots, Captain Sumeet Sabharwal (L) and First Officer Clive Kunder (R). Source: Gujarat Samachar.
Conclusion
Even though there was a plane crash, the video circulating on social media claiming to have been the pilot of the crashed plane announcing his mother on board Air India 171 is misleading. The video was posted several weeks before the tragic incident. Also, the pilot in the original video was not on the crashed plane.