There is growing speculation that the pilot’s final actions may have saved many lives.

The pilot of the ill-fated Air India flight is though to have made a last-minute heroic decision just before the aircraft cras.hed.

On June 12, an Air India flight that departed from Ahmedabad started experiencing difficulties shortly after taking off.

Less than a minute after leaving the runway, the plane—reportedly a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner—crashed into a hostel for a medical college.

The tragedy has so far claimed 270 lives, including people on board and on the ground. Only one passenger survived.

Among the victims was Arjun Patoliya, a father of two who had been traveling to fulfill his late wife Bharti’s final wish of having her ashes scattered in Gujarat. She had died just two weeks earlier from cancer. Now, their two daughters, aged four and eight, have been left orphaned.

Despite the devastating loss of life, some believe the outcome could have been far worse if not for the pilot’s quick thinking. Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and Officer Clive Kunder, who were operating the flight, had over 9,000 flight hours combined, according to LBC.

The crash occurred just 5 kilometers from Civil Hospital Ahmedabad—a major medical facility with more than 3,000 beds. Many believe the pilots deliberately avoided crashing into the hospital or a nearby densely populated residential area.

Online discussions have highlighted how close the crash site was to critical locations.

A Reddit user pointed out that the plane came down only 1.7 kilometers from the airport, in a relatively less populated area housing medical student accommodations. Just 400 meters north lies the hospital, and to the south, right beside the airport, is a high-density housing area.

Nearby is also the neighborhood of Asarva which, as of 2020, was home to 5,100 people. Had the plane crashed there, many more lives would have been lost.

While many theories continue to circulate regarding the cause of the crash, answers will remain unclear until the aircraft’s black box is examined.

According to the BBC, the device was found on Friday (June 13). Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu, Minister of Civil Aviation of India, said finding the box marked ‘an important step forward in the investigation’ and that it would ‘significantly aid the inquiry’.