Air India 787 Crashes

Heartbreaking

 

Ahmedabad Plane Crash Live Updates: 5 Students Dead, 40 Injured At Medical Students' Hostel In Ahmedabad

Ahmedabad Plane Crash Live Updates: 5 Students Dead, 40 Injured At Medical Students' Hostel In Ahmedabad

 

There is no procedure on the 787 that calls for flaps up lower than 1000’ agl, and even then is after significant acceleration. If it is true that the crew raised the flaps early that would absolutely take critical lift component away from the wings and the end result would be exactly what happened. As for taking off with no flaps, the 787 won’t let you advance the thrust to TO with no flaps out without all sorts of warnings in the cockpit before they even got to 20 kts, so that makes it virtually impossible to start the take off roll with no flaps. Again if true the flaps were raised early that is the most likely culprit. Now if they lost an engine AND the crew raised the flaps by mistake that would be catastrophic. The plane is designed to climb with full fuel and full cargo on a single engine ( with flaps out ) and that procedure is practiced over and over. So again early clues pointing to the crew accidentally raising the flaps prematurely, but that’s slightly educated speculation based on very limited data, so I do reserve the right to change my opinion as more info is released.

 

horrible for their loved ones

 

Wow - one of the best posts I've ever seen on here!

 

Just came across a video of the crash - not posting here, but you can find it easily if you want. You could clearly hear a jet engine (whether 1, 2, or just the APU is unknown), but that's disturbing to see the plane clearly isn't producing enough lift.

 

As a non-expert and looking at two grainy videos, nothing I say carries weight. However, when the take off configuration is set, and the flaps are fully extended, trailling edges of the wings are clearly not uniform across the length of the wing. This jet looked like the trailing edge was fully smooth and even along the entire length, ie it sure looks like the take off flaps were not fully extended.

However, that is just so hard to believe because modern jets have warning alarms ( I am pretty sure) that scream in the cockpit when the take off configuration is not set correctly??

 

Reportedly one survivor. Going to have hell of a survivor's guilt if true.

British passenger in seat 11A survives India plane crash, reports say

 

yes and no. I don’t fly the 78. I fly the A320 and have been a commercial airline pilot for almost 25 years with type ratings in Boeing and Airbus as well as other aircraft. We have different flap settings for takeoff depending on weight, temperature, airport elevation etc. basically all things performance based. Most of those take off configuration tests look for A flap setting and don’t know the correct one for each specific flight. It’s very possible they put in some flaps but not the required amount. My current aircraft procedure is to verify flap settings after engine start and again as we take the runway for takeoff. So it’s possible they had flaps set which would silence the alarm but not enough for a hot India summer day with full load of people and fuel

 

Very tragic and my thoughts are with their families during this time. I haven’t flown in recent years ever since Boeing started cutting corners and wouldn’t you know it, another Boeing crash - this doesn’t happen to Airbus. When do they start being found liable for these death traps?

 

Fascinating. I saw the opinion from the Flightradar 24 (stress opinion since I have no idea who the person writing it was) site where someone said for a 787 in Amedabad at 37 C and assuming a full load, should have been at Flaps 5 of Flaps 15. He also said that too many assumptions were being made from sub-optimal video.

 

guess I should start reserving the bulk head seats

 

agree. It way too early for sure and I think i qualified my opinion that it was basically speculation until I hear more. That being said there has never been a time I flew with passengers where the gear was down and the flaps are up. There have been times where I’ve done a maintenance ferry of a broken aircraft where the gear were locked down for the entire flight, but that’s with no passengers etc. we have to fly very slow and low and burn a ton of fuel.