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Ugh. Looks like they aren't sure what caused the crash yet. How terrifying.
My heart goes out to all of the people and families involved.
Don’t take Air India. Ever. I don’t know why the aviation safety expert was surprised. Airplanes are built with redundancy, but there is a recording from an Air India plane trying to land at the NYC area (I think JFK?). Everything failed. They do not take maintenance seriously
Damn. To have that many electronics fail simultaneously, with redundancy, and still have control of the ship. Incredible.
Oh yeah, full bloody credit to the pilots.
I would still NEVER fly Air India. They make American’s maintenance woes look like Delta.
Boeing, but a generally reliable model of Boeing this time.
I’d guess that it broke up in the air based on the description of the debris crashing… but that just raises more questions.
It never got higher than a few hundred feet. It took off and then just slowly drifted down and hit the ground.
One expert suspected a possible takeoff config issue, like flaps and slats not being set correctly. It did appear sluggish to lift off, and seemed to have a lack of lift once in the air, so I’d be inclined to agree.
There should be warnings to prevent that, because it’s a known issue that has been the cause of high-profile crashes before, so it will be interesting to hear what the ultimate cause turns out to be.
There’s frames in the multiple videos where you can see the slats in Takeoff Config - flaps are hard to see on a 787 because they don’t deploy that much on takeoff.
Yeah. The suggestion I saw was that instead of retracting the gear they mistakenly retracted the flaps.
Now in the video the wings do look quite flat. But yes, it would be hard to say for sure in a video of that quality at that distance.
The descent looks (to my untrained flight sim eyes) to be controlled albeit without power.
At 400ft agl they had very little options most likely. Not even much choice in what they hit.
Very sad all round.
It looked like they lost power in both engines, but hard to tell without audio. I was thinking bird strike, but couldn't see birds in the CCTV video. Looked to be a cloud of dust or something just on rotation.
Got a dumb question.
Is Vr the same for regular and short take off landing procedures? I was under the impression that they were different, and therefore you wouldn’t actually get off the ground if you required short take off (IIRC most passenger planes are short take off to minimize runway distance).
The other thing is, checking flaps is part of the standard preflight checklist. I don’t know if you can see the flaps for the 787 from the cockpit or not. Take following with silo of salt because I do not hold an ATP, but if you can’t, out sounds like another Air India maintenance catatrophe
So the VR speed for a 787 isn't going to be set like a Cessna 172, it's going to be a calculated value depending on weight, temperature, etc. The computers will calculate this speed for you before flight, assuming all info is input correctly.
The cockpit won't be able to see the flaps visually but will have a digital indicator that shows the position. During pre take-off checks one of the procedures would be to check this indicator for the correct setting.
With the very limited available info and the fact that video shows it slowly descending without obvious external mechanical issues, my initial guess is on pilot or computer error.
Some people were saying, based on a video of the crash that it might have been mechanical, as they heard the sound of the RAT that only deploys on double engine failure.
Also, wouldn't a bad config cause a full-on stall? It seemed more of a controlled glide to me.
Really it's far too soon to say and until they get a chance to look over flight data, nobody knows for sure. The RAT would be a good indicator, I know Airbus deploys the RAT automatically in a double engine faliure but am unsure about Boeing's but asume it's the same. I have also heard that the airline's mechanical inspections and maintenance procedures are not great, so maybe that had a role too. The sole survivor said about 30 seconds after takeoff he heard a bang, possibly a bird strike or turbine breaking apart. Even a single engine lost that soon in flight would probably cause a similar outcome to here, the aircraft is at it's heaviest on take off and didn't have altitude to work with. But again, lots of guesses from me here.
Really depends how much the pilots were paying attention, a stall should have a few different warnings, both electrically from the AoA indicator and physically how the aircraft behaves. To me it looked like the pilots were doing what they could to gain altitude without stalling in the process, unfortunately there was just no way out in that scenario. If the power loss situation ends up being correct, it's a very shitty position to be in and was always one of my biggest fears while flying as your options during the initial climb are extremely limited to none at all.
Yeah, you summed up all my thoughts on the subject really great. It really feels that it would be better to have airports a bit further away from population centers, but I know it's not always feasible.
At least at my local I can glide my little Piper down to the tulip fields, at least that's what I keep telling myself. Doing it in an airliner... it must have been horrifying for the pilots.
Yeah, India has to be one of the worst places for an accident like this just due to pure population density too. Looking at the direction it took off, they would have had to make it 7 miles at an absolute minimum to clear most of the densely populated area, or turn right and attempt to land in the river. But in this situation it only made it 1 mile, so neither was a possibility.
It's a whole lot different with an aircraft that size. I mean I used to practice power off forced approaches pretty frequently when I was flying, in small aircraft it's pretty safe. But that was starting from altitude. How many times have you cut the engine and practiced a power loss situation shortly after takeoff? I don't believe I ever have at least, closet thing I did to that was a simulated rope break while instructing on gliders and even then we gave ourselves wayyy more altitude than we required and were flying over the airport still when we pulled the release. Plus it's a glider, so cheating a bit. It's just too risky even to practice really, because you don't have an easy out if the engine dies after being pulled to idle or something. Same goes for an airliner but much worse, at most they may have trained for this in a simulator. Best thing you can do to prepare is have altitude based decision gates so you don't have to think as much and can just act if something does go wrong, even if those decisions are "200 to 500 feet I'm landing in the trees".
closet thing I did to that was a simulated rope break while instructing on gliders
Yeah same, except I had a bunch of actual rope breaks (faulty rope). It's fucking harrowing.
I got lucky and in my years of gliding never had an actual rope break. In fact I only ever heard of one happening at this place while I worked there. They had the ropes down to an art though, inspected multiple times a day and the end inspected on every launch, custom covers for the ring to protect it while dragged down the runway, it was fancy. Being a training facility I suppose that's smart. Closest I got was during my instructor training with the chief pilot, that's the only person allowed to do unbriefed emergency simulations. It definitely caught me off guard!
There’s literally a video of the entire "flight", no it did most certainly not break up mid-air.
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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