Dream liner down in India on air port

Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules

Survivor said 30 seconds after takeoff there was a loud bang.
A friend of mine from India (he is here in the US at the moment) said there are preliminary reports from people on the ground of at least 1 piece (skin panel?) departing the aircraft a few seconds before the crash.
Some people have suggested a potential bird strike, though I've heard that the 787 can still take off on one engine.
 
They would have noticed a flap / hydraulic issue during system checks.

They should have. I know the 787 has electronic checklists, but I have no idea if the aircrew can override warnings like that, or how present such warnings even are in the cockpit. I'm assuming one pilot is reading off the checklist, and the other is executing/declaring green, but maybe a faulty indicator, or crew misattention? Or something else?

Obvs it will have to await box recoveries and a full investigation, but I struggle to understand how in such an automated airplane how the crew might be unaware that the flaps weren't down. Of course, I'm not a pilot, so caveats about back-seat driving etc apply.
 
They should have. I know the 787 has electronic checklists, but I have no idea if the aircrew can override warnings like that, or how present such warnings even are in the cockpit. I'm assuming one pilot is reading off the checklist, and the other is executing/declaring green, but maybe a faulty indicator, or crew misattention? Or something else?

Obvs it will have to await box recoveries and a full investigation, but I struggle to understand how in such an automated airplane how the crew might be unaware that the flaps weren't down. Of course, I'm not a pilot, so caveats about back-seat driving etc apply.

Yeah I don't get it either…
 
The more I look at this, I'm wondering if a mistake was made in the cockpit.

The aircraft appeared to initially obtain positive rate of climb. At that point, the crew would have retracted the landing gear. What if the crew mistakenly retracted the flaps instead of the gear? At that low of an altitude there may have not been enough time to recover.

Again, just speculation…
 
The more I look at this, I'm wondering if a mistake was made in the cockpit.

The aircraft appeared to initially obtain positive rate of climb. At that point, the crew would have retracted the landing gear. What if the crew mistakenly retracted the flaps instead of the gear? At that low of an altitude there may have not been enough time to recover.

Again, just speculation…

That's been my thinking all along. If they tried to take off without flaps, the bird simply wouldn't have got off the ground. It was heavily loaded and in 40 degree heat...not a good recipe for a flapless take-off, aside from the cockpit warnings that would have been going off.

Given that it did manage to get airborne, the most logical explanation is either a double engine failure or the crew mistakenly retracted the flaps instead of the undercarriage.
 
We'll know soon:

AHMEDABAD, India (AP) — The black box from the Air India plane was recovered on Friday, authorities said, in a development that will likely lead to clues about the cause of the crash that killed 241 people on the flight and several others on the ground.

The London-bound Boeing 787 struck a medical college hostel when the plane came down shortly after takeoff on Thursday in a residential area of the northwestern city of Ahmedabad.

The plane's digital flight data recorder, or black box, was recovered from a rooftop near the crash site and India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau said that it had begun its work with "full force."


 

View attachment 835297
There is some information here that seems to contradict what is in the news.
The fatalities are 241 of the 242 on board.
There are about 50 additional fatalities on the ground.
The engine were stated to be Rolls Royce Trent 1000 type.

Configuration seems a bit odd for being 600 feet in the air, Gear was down but flaps were up.
Did an idjit pilot mistakenly retract flaps instead of gear on takeoff???
 
There is some information here that seems to contradict what is in the news.
The fatalities are 241 of the 242 on board.
There are about 50 additional fatalities on the ground.
The engine were stated to be Rolls Royce Trent 1000 type.

Configuration seems a bit odd for being 600 feet in the air, Gear was down but flaps were up.
Did an idjit pilot mistakenly retract flaps instead of gear on takeoff???
How does that contradict what's in the news? This is exactly what they say here in the news.
 
How does that contradict what's in the news? This is exactly what they say here in the news.
The first videos I was watching claimed 600+ feet for altitude. This has been corrected to about 330 feet.
The videos were claiming about 270 fatalities. The 50 on the ground is because I can't Math.
The engines were specified as Rolls Royce Trent 1000 in one video, not GE. I personally don't know but from the video.
The listing of 242 fatalities from the aircraft is obviously in error according to Mr. Ramesh.
 
AHMEDABAD, India (AP) — Search and recovery teams continued scouring the site of one of India's worst aviation disasters for a third day after the Air India flight fell from the sky and killed at least 270 people in Gujarat state, officials said Saturday.

The London-bound Boeing 787 struck a medical college hostel in a residential area of the northwestern city of Ahmedabad minutes after takeoff Thursday, killing 241 people on board and at least 29 on the ground. One passenger survived.

Recovery teams working until late Friday found at least 25 more bodies in the debris, officials said.

Dr. Dhaval Gameti at the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad told The Associated Press the facility had received 270 bodies, adding that the lone surviving passenger was still under observation for some of his wounds.

"He is doing very well and will be ready to be discharged anytime soon," Gameti said Saturday.


 
The more I read and watch about this tragedy, the less I think my first speculation was right. I didn't realize 787s usually take off with only 5° flap, which may well not be visible is the videos I've seen. Perhaps this was indeed raising flaps instead of gear.

We'll know once the black boxes are decoded.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back