Air India CEO Accused of Plagiarizing Crash Response

On June 12, 2025, Air India Flight 171 ended in disaster. Shortly after takeoff, the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed into the hostel block of BJ Medical College in Ahmedabad, India. Over 280 people died in the crash, and another 60 people were injured.

Without a doubt, the accident is a significant tragedy. For the families and friends of those lost or injured, it is a loss that is only beginning to be felt. 

However, it is also a familiar tragedy. Though commercial aviation is a remarkably safe way to travel, accidents do inevitably happen. Airlines know it is a matter of when, not if, one of their flights will end in catastrophe.

As a result, airlines have a strict protocol for responding to a plane crash. This response is a mixture of humanitarian assistance, investigation and public relations. They want to find out what happened, help the victims as best they can, and calm public fear and anger.

Unfortunately for Air India, they made a major misstep on the last point. 

Hours after the crash, Air India’s CEO, Campbell Wilson, released a video message briefing the public on the crash. In addition to providing basic information, the statement offered condolences and apologies to those impacted.

However, it turned out that over half of the speech was copied verbatim from a January 2025 speech given by American Airlines CEO Robert Isom. Isom gave his address following a mid-air collision in Washington, DC, that resulted in 67 deaths, including 64 passengers and crew on American Airlines Flight 5342.

This raises a simple question: What happened? Why did Wilson copy so much of his speech? The answer is likely very simple.

The Story So Far

Hours after the crash, Wilson took to social media with a video message with a two-minute video message about the crash.

The video was very matter-of-fact, providing condolences for the loss of life but focusing on giving information about the crash.

However, shortly after the speech, several in India began to notice similarities between Wilson’s speech and Isom’s January speech. One X (formerly Twitter) user, @beatoftraal, offered a side-by-side comparison of the two speeches.

The backlash against the CEO intensified over the next few days, and the story finally began to gain traction in Western media late last week. Most notably, the New York Times ran an article on the similarities. The New York Times also uploaded a side-by-side of the speeches to their Instagram account.

In an article for Stuff, an Air India spokesperson said that people need to focus on “the spirit of what he said,” not the way it was conveyed.

However, that is a big ask as the authenticity of a message is a big part of its spirit. With this information, Wilson’s message appears incredibly inauthentic.

What Happened and Why It Matters

To be clear, there is no way to be 100% certain of what happened. Only those working behind the scenes at both airlines know for sure.

That said, I can make a reasonable guess. The pattern of the copying, to me, indicates that both American Airlines and Air India used the same template. Most likely, they both share a consultant or crisis firm that offered the template up as a draft for this kind of situation.

I say this for two reasons. First, the two speeches were used for a very specific purpose, a video CEO speech hours after a fatal air disaster. Second, the format of the copying suggests to me that it is intended as a template, with obvious spaces to include information about the particular crash.

Most likely, this speech is part of a larger template or strategy that multiple airlines use. In addition to offering the template for the speech, it likely also has timings for when statements should be released and by whom. After all, airlines prepare for disasters like this one, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that some of their planning will overlap.

However, this creates a severe problem for both airlines. These speeches are meant to be deeply personal. They are supposed to help the families of the victims, calm anger and express sorrow. Instead, it’s pretty clear that these are pre-packaged statements being lightly modified to fit the current tragedy.

To be clear, we’ve seen this before. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, several universities were caught plagiarizing letters for students, parents and staff. These were difficult letters, and in these cases, they likely copied directly from the source. However, the plagiarism raised serious questions about the sincerity of the comments, as it does here.

It isn’t easy to be heartfelt and personable when you aren’t using your voice. You can’t be relatable if you aren’t authentic. Part of that means using your words, not a template that was provided to you.

In short, no matter how well-intentioned the speech is, if it isn’t authentic, it comes across as another instance of a corporation trying to save face rather than providing genuine support.

What Companies Need to Do

To be clear, I have some sympathy for both American Airlines and Air India here. Air disasters are, given enough time and flight hours, all but a certainty. They raise serious legal, ethical, and business questions, and they require a quick response. Handling them well requires a great deal of preparation.

However, there is such a thing as overpreparing.

While air disasters to airlines may be a business problem, they are much more than that to the victims and the public. You can’t address that reality by treating such an event like any other “bad news” situation. You must respond not as a CEO or a spokesperson, but as a human being.

That is not something businesses excel at, especially on a quick turnaround.

In an ideal world, that letter wouldn’t exist. This would be a space for a CEO or other spokesperson to speak from the heart while also providing the needed information. After all, the focus should be on the victims and their families.

However, that’s not practical. For the airlines, there’s too much at risk to have an official deviate from the script. They could do much more harm than create a plagiarism scandal.

Therefore, if this template must exist, it should be used only once.

Once Isom used the speech in January, it should have been tossed and rewritten. Although neither speech went particularly well with the public, they could have at least avoided the plagiarism controversy.

Instead, both companies have shone a light on how they prepare for and handle air disasters. In trying to put a human face on their response, they’ve shown just how scripted the process is. That doesn’t benefit anyone involved, least of all the victims and their families.

Bottom Line

This story isn’t really a plagiarism story. I don’t think that Air India copied and pasted American Airlines’ speech and tried to pass it off as their own. The much more likely scenario is that both companies use some third party to help plan and prepare their disaster response.

To be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Crisis management is a whole field of public relations. Though every air disaster is different, there are enough similarities that it makes sense for airlines to share procedures and toolkits.

However, these are human tragedies, and human tragedies require a human response. That’s just not something you can fake with a boilerplate speech, especially when someone else used the same template just months prior.

While I would love to read the spirit of the message that Wilson gave, the authenticity is part of that spirit. An inauthentic boilerplate message indicates an inauthentic boilerplate response. That is not what the families or the general public need.

The person who drafted this speech and these policies needs to revisit them. Planning is important. But so is authenticity. Finding a balance between those things is essential.

Ultimately, this is an embarrassing mistake that highlights how companies like Air India prepare for a disaster. It’s a “how the sausage is made” moment. However, it’s also a call to action. A reminder for airlines to do better and not forget that the human toll has to come first.