Headlines around the world tied a captain’s positive marijuana test to a terrifying midair plunge. He wasn’t the one flying. The first officer was at the controls, and Airbus says the aircraft registered pressure losses across all three hydraulic systems and that key flight controls stopped responding for four seconds. Every one of those headlines was technically true. Together, they told a story the investigation hasn’t established.
You have probably seen some version of this story by now. An Air India jet flying from Phuket to Delhi dropped roughly 300 feet in cruise, injured 24 people, and its captain later tested positive for marijuana.
Both of those things are true.
Here is what a great many of those headlines left out. The captain who tested positive was not the pilot flying the airplane when it happened. According to his own account to investigators, first reported by Hindustan Times, he was not in his seat. He was standing behind the first officer, and when the aircraft moved, it threw him to the cockpit floor.
The first officer was the one at the controls.
What Happened at 36,000 Feet
Air India flight AI2379, an Airbus A320neo registered VT-EXO, left Phuket on the morning of August 4 with 137 passengers and eight crew members. At around 9:33 a.m. India time, cruising near 36,160 feet over the Odisha coast, the aircraft lost roughly 300 feet of altitude. Twenty passengers and four cabin crew members were hurt. The plane stayed airborne for about another hour and a half and landed safely in Delhi.
Air India first described the event as turbulence. It later dropped that description and called it a sudden loss of altitude. Indian authorities classified it as a serious incident, and the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau is investigating with technical help from Airbus and France’s BEA.
The aircraft’s Centralised Fault Display System log, reviewed by Hindustan Times, recorded nine warning messages inside a single minute at around 9:32 a.m. Low pressure in the Green, Blue and Yellow hydraulic systems. Low reservoir levels in Yellow and Blue. An autopilot disconnect. An elevator flight-control fault.
An A320 has three independent hydraulic systems for a reason. They are what move the surfaces that point the airplane up, down and sideways. All three registered pressure loss in quick succession. The Airbus analysis, described by The Tribune, puts it down to the second: one system failed just before 9:32:44 a.m., the other two failed at 9:32:45, and all three came back seven seconds later.
Inside the cockpit
The first officer is flying the aircraft. The captain, acting as pilot monitoring, is standing behind the first officer’s seat after a trip to the washroom, discussing the air conditioning system.
9:32:44 a.m. IST. One hydraulic system fails. One second later, the other two go. Nine warnings hit in under a minute. The autopilot disconnects.
The aircraft pitches upward. For roughly four seconds, per Airbus, the elevators and ailerons are unusable.
The first officer applies full nose-down input. Airbus says there is “no direct response” from the flight-control surfaces.
Seven seconds after the first failure, all three systems are back. The aircraft drops roughly 300 feet. The captain is thrown to the cockpit floor.
That sequence comes from Airbus’s own preliminary assessment, written in response to a request from Air India and reviewed by Reuters. The manufacturer has not determined why the hydraulic pressure dropped. It has asked the airline to test the hydraulic systems and the sensors that monitor them, to pull some of those sensors for inspection, and to check the aircraft for structural damage, because the jet took forces beyond its specified limits during the drop. It also wants maintenance records covering the previous month and fuller accounts from both pilots.
Reuters also reported, plainly, that no link has been established between the captain’s test result and the loss of altitude.
Everything the Captain Is Facing
None of the above is a defense of Sudeep Vashistha, and this piece is not going to pretend otherwise.
A post-flight screening returned a non-negative result. A confirmatory test came back positive for cannabis. Investigators questioned him for over an hour. He told them he had been struggling to sleep for some time because of personal circumstances, that he had not slept well during the Phuket layover, and that he was taking medication prescribed by his family doctor for the problem. He also told them he had slept for 30 to 35 minutes during the flight itself.
Both pilots have been pulled from the flying roster pending the outcome of the investigation. Air India began mandatory psychoactive substance screening for its entire pilot workforce on August 13, across the mainline carrier and Air India Express, going further than what the Directorate General of Civil Aviation currently requires.
Whether a captain running on very little sleep, taking medication whose disclosure status remains unclear, and with cannabis metabolites in his system should have been in that cockpit at all is a serious question. Investigators have every reason to ask it. Air India has every reason to answer it.
It is a different question from what made the airplane drop.
Technically True Is Not the Same as True
Look at how the story got packaged. A plane dropped 300 feet. A pilot tested positive for marijuana. Put those two sentences next to each other, in that order, under one headline, and the reader does the rest of the work without being asked.
Nobody had to write the word “caused.” The arrangement said it.
Imagine a car crashes and the owner is drunk. Now imagine he was in the passenger seat and his sober brother was driving. “Car Owner Was Drunk When Vehicle Crashed” is a true sentence. It is also a sentence that leaves a reader believing something the reporter knows is not the case.
There is a second thing worth saying, and it is the point cannabis consumers have been making for decades in every context from job applications to custody hearings. A positive result for cannabis metabolites establishes exposure. It does not establish when, and it does not establish impairment at any particular moment. That is a real limitation of the test and it is well understood.
But that argument is not even necessary here, which is what makes this case unusual. You do not have to litigate toxicology. You only have to ask who was holding the controls.
What we know / What we don’t know
What we know
- The captain tested positive for cannabis on a confirmatory test.
- The first officer was the pilot flying. The captain was pilot monitoring and out of his seat.
- All three hydraulic systems registered pressure loss in quick succession.
- For roughly four seconds, the elevators and ailerons did not respond.
What we don’t know
- Why the hydraulic pressure dropped. Airbus has not determined this.
- Whether the captain’s test result has any bearing on the incident. No link has been established.
- When he consumed, or whether he was impaired at any point during the flight.
- Whether a captain in his seat would have changed the outcome.
Maybe Sudeep Vashistha had no business anywhere near that cockpit on August 4. Investigators will decide that, and they should. Maybe his test result will end up mattering to the final report.
But if a positive marijuana test was important enough to put in the headline, who was actually flying the airplane was important enough to mention.
