A retired Boeing pilot’s insight suggests Air India Flight 171 may have crashed because conflicting sensor data caused its automated systems to believe the plane was still on the ground, denying pilot control and turning a routine takeoff into a devastating and deeply unsettling tragedy.

Nearly three minutes after lifting off into clear skies, Air India Flight 171 disappeared from radar and slammed back to earth, killing all 241 people on board and plunging the aviation world into shock.

The aircraft was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, one of the most advanced commercial jets ever built, recently cleared from maintenance, operating under normal weather conditions, and flown by an experienced crew.

There were no mayday calls, no visible struggle, and no obvious mechanical failures recorded in the initial data.

For weeks, investigators could not explain how such a modern aircraft could simply fall from the sky.

The mystery deepened when preliminary black box analysis yielded almost nothing definitive.

Engines were producing thrust.

Control surfaces appeared responsive.

There was no evidence of fire, bird strike, or fuel contamination.

Yet buried deep in the aircraft’s data logs was a cryptic system entry that investigators initially dismissed as irrelevant noise: “Manual override denied.

Environment mismatch.

” At the time, no one could say what it meant.

That changed when a retired Boeing test pilot, Captain Michael Harrington, reviewed publicly released technical summaries from the investigation while watching coverage of the crash from his home in Washington state.

Harrington, who had logged more than 18,000 flight hours and spent years evaluating automated flight-control systems, says the phrase triggered an immediate and chilling recognition.

“I’d seen that logic before,” Harrington said in an interview.

“Not in a crash—but in a near-catastrophe.”

Harrington traced the message to a rare and little-discussed failure state he encountered four years earlier during a test flight over the Pacific.

According to his account, the aircraft entered what he now calls “Ghost Mode,” a condition in which the onboard computers misinterpret sensor data and conclude the plane is still on the ground—even while it is airborne.

When that happens, critical flight protections can lock out pilot commands deemed unsafe for a grounded aircraft.

“In my case, the jet briefly refused to respond to pitch inputs,” Harrington explained.

“It wasn’t broken.

It was confused.

The system believed it hadn’t taken off.”

The implications for Flight 171 are profound.

Modern aircraft rely on a network of sensors to determine whether they are airborne, including airspeed indicators, radio altimeters, and a small but vital component known as a weight-on-wheels sensor.

If that sensor or its associated logic incorrectly signals that the aircraft is still on the runway, automated systems may suppress normal flight control laws, limit thrust response, or deny pilot overrides altogether.

Investigators reviewing Harrington’s theory noted that Flight 171’s data showed conflicting inputs in the seconds after liftoff.

While airspeed and climb rate increased, one ground-proximity channel briefly reported values consistent with a grounded state.

That discrepancy, Harrington argues, could have triggered a cascade in which the aircraft’s computers rejected pilot commands as invalid.

“The crew may have been fighting an airplane that simply wouldn’t believe it was flying,” he said.

Families of the victims reacted with a mix of anger and heartbreak as the theory gained attention.

“If this is true, then my wife didn’t die because of a mistake,” said Anil Verma, who lost his spouse in the crash.

“She died because the system failed her.”

Aviation experts caution that the theory remains unproven, but several agree it fits troubling gaps in the existing narrative.

The lack of distress calls could be explained by an event that unfolded too quickly and too unexpectedly.

The absence of classic failure signatures aligns with a logic conflict rather than a physical breakdown.

Neither Boeing nor Air India has publicly endorsed Harrington’s conclusions, but sources familiar with the investigation say his analysis is now being reviewed alongside other hypotheses.

Regulatory authorities are reportedly examining whether similar sensor disagreements have occurred on other flights without being recognized as precursors to disaster.

What makes the Air India 171 case especially unsettling is what it suggests about the future of flight.

Automation has made aviation safer than ever, but it has also created systems so complex that even experienced pilots may struggle to understand—or override—them when something goes wrong.

“This isn’t about blaming technology,” Harrington said quietly.

“It’s about remembering that when a machine becomes the final authority, a single misunderstood signal can be fatal.”

As investigators continue their work, Flight 171 has become more than a tragic accident.

It is now a warning—one that challenges assumptions about control, trust, and the thin line between protection and peril in the age of intelligent machines.