First 787 Dreamliner crash: Air India

New vid from airport - takeoff to crash. Very quick, NO obvious signs of bird strike or smoke/flames from engines.



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Definitely lost thrust just after rotation. Had to lose in both engines which makes no sense on that airplane. They didn't even have time to pull the landing gear up. I'll speculate it was a maintenance issue.

Godspeed to those who lost their lives.

Looks like the tail is intact so at least they will know what happened from the CVR and FDR.

 

Very tragic and sad .. my prayers will go out to the families of the victims

I was wondering if it had to do with flaps not being at the right extension

 

From the video that appears to be a possibility, but I doubt if they would have reached that altitude if that had been the case.

 

NDTV is knocking out the vids.

Incorrect takeoff configuration. Why? Software problem? Software on the 787 should prevent this I believe .... or at least give major warnings prior to takeoff roll.
> Between the vids and data recorders this will be 'easily' solved I would think. >>> Boeing must be holding it's breath to find out.
>>> 787 has been in service for close to 14 years (Oct 2011). Now this? maintenance issue?



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The video showed that the aircraft used the entire length of the runway, and I firmly believe that it shows that the flaps were not in takeoff position. Those two facets reinforce each other. With the flaps still up, the pilots would have needed the full length of the runway to get off the ground, if at all. They probably used all the thrust at their disposal to do so. The aircraft seems to have remained at the same angle of attack after liftoff; perhaps if they had lowered the nose they might have been able to fly out of it.

 

Several "experts" on aviation for the media are saying after analysis of the video flaps were up.

Looks to me like when it started to lose altitude nose went up more.

Would there not have been alarms when he went to take off power and it was not in take off config?

Friend of mine did a year contract for them years ago. Not surprised based on his experience. A lot of pressure to let the local copilots fly. Mike had to take back control regularly.

 

Not so sure......I suppose we all like to get to the conclusion but the video of one of the wings laying on the ground (the fire engines ran over it) tell a different story. That's a plane that can take off on one engine. To lose power like that with no yaw .......something else was seriously wrong.

I'll add that the 787 has the most advanced avionics of any commercial airliner and records more data. It shouldn't take them long to figure it out. Who to blame.......that might take longer.

 

One analyst thinks he heard the ram air turbine (RAT) deployed as the aircraft flew by. Since the RAT deploys automatically in the event of a loss of thrust, that might be an indicator. I think the flight data recorder, if it survived intact, will tell the story.

 

The only time I have seen a video of an airplane doing that was when it was over grossed by a large amount and could not gain altitude. No smoke or any parts falling off. I bet this was caused by human error, not mechanical. Flap settings also a possibility.

 

The recorders should be fine - the tail (where they are mounted) was fully intact, sticking out of the building it hit.

Jedi

 

crazy. On an early morning call with the UK a colleague said he was leaving soon for the airport, heading to Tannerif for vacation. I thought of the '77 disaster there (which was directly caused by the arrogant, reckless, top 747 pilot in the world at the time) and cracked a joke about Boeings.
An hour later check out NYTimes and see the headline.

The Indian 787 sure does seem to be trying to climb with less than full power, but maybe ground effect was enough to get it airborn without flaps, then lost lift once out of ground effect?

Seems crazy that every light and horn wouldn't have been blaring if they tried to takeoff without flaps, if not automatically restricting the plane's groundspeed.

better not be a problem with AoA sensors....

 

first row of economy, right next to door
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Hopefully it's something simple as bad fuel from that local facility and the engines couldn't put out enough power. Flaps should be down on that takeoff otherwise the plane would have set off a bunch of alarms and I would be surprised if they purposefully ignored and overrode those alarms.

My own experience with the 787 has been on American Airlines and both times the plane had problems. First trip was a return flight from Paris (Retromobile) to I think Philadelphia...hour delay with some software issue with the engines. Almost missed my connection at that terrible Philly airport. Few months later also leaving Paris (after LeMans this time 2 years ago), hundreds of people were at my gate apparently waiting all day for their AA 787 to get some software issue resolved. So I'm going to just guess the engines had a software issue and prevented it from getting the right power for takeoff. I'm flying to London on a Norse 787 in a few weeks and not looking forward to this flight.

 

AA also has a lot of problems with their baby bus A319's. They are always broken. I always say it's because they are made in Alabama

By the way, this is a Seattle made 787. They do have a lot of quality control issues from the newer 787's coming from the other factory on the east coast.

 

Two different pilots think that the copilot might have hit the wrong lever when given the "Gear Up" command and may have raised the flaps instead. That would have been about the point where the aircraft stopped climbing and started to settle. The captain would have been too busy flying the plane to notice the error.

On the other hand, a wreckage photo surfaced that seemed to show a portion of the right wing with a leading edge slat that appeared to be still extended.

 

I heard that as well

 

Usually there are gates at various places on the flap handle. This prevents you from just going from flaps up to full down or Vice versa in the other direction. Let’s say flaps were 15 for takeoff and the pilot moved the flap lever instead of the gear lever. Well raising the gear is one movement of the handle from down to up. If he grabbed the flaps instead of the gear he maybe would have moved it to the flaps one position which would have been leading edge slats with a very small deflection of the main flaps. Having said all of the above I was a 757/767 guy and that’s the way the flaps work on those planes and I’m assuming it would be similar on the 787.

 

How is that even possible? Those levers are on different parts of the cockpit entirely and not next to one another. On the 787 and other Boeing models, too.

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