Ahmedabad Plane Crash: Viral Photo Misidentifies Pilot Of 2020 AI Express Accident In Kerala As Captain Sumeet Sabharwal

Claim

A photo of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal who commanded the Air India Flight 171 from Ahmedabad to Gatwick, London, which tragically crashed shortly after take-off on June 12, 2025, killing at least over 200 people.

The archived version of the post can be seen here, which has clocked 97.1K views so far.

Fact

Newschecker ran a keyword search for “Captain Sumeet Sabharwal”, which led us to multiple news reports, seen here, here, here and here, on the pilots of the crashed Air India flight, sharing a photo of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal. We can clearly see that the person in the viral photo is not Captain Sabharwal, a senior Air India pilot with nearly three decades of flying experience, who, along with crew members, tragically lost their lives in Thursday’s plane crash.

We then ran a reverse image search, which led us to several reports from August 2020, seen here, here, here, here, and here, sharing the same viral photo, identifying him as Captain Deepak Sathe, who had manned the ill-fated Air India Express flight from Dubai that had crashed at Kerala’s Kozhikode airport in August 2020, killing him and 17 others. The media outlets credited the photo to PTI.

“Captain Deepak Vasanth Sathe was among the 18 people who died after an Air India Express flight from Dubai crash-landed at Kozhikode airport in Kerala on Friday. Sathe, 60, was a former Wing Commander of the Indian Air Force (IAF) and had served with its flight-testing wing before taking to commercial flying,” read an Indian Express report, dated August 8, 2020.

Also Read: Old Video Showing Passenger Live Streaming From Within An Aircraft Linked To Ahmedabad Plane Crash

Sources
Open Magazine, X post, June 12, 2025
Times of India article, June 13, 2025
Hindustan Times report, June 13, 2025
Economic Times report, August 8, 2020
MoneyControl report, August 8, 2020
Scroll report, August 8, 2020