Air India Crash

From the video in the ops post the flaps do look to be up and not correctly configured for take off. Also you can see the plane sink and that is the behaviour expected and has been seen many times when planes take off configured incorrectly for take off. Many such accidents have happened and ended up in this manner and the plane reached a maximum altitude of 620-625 feet according to some flight tracking sites.

Pilot/copilot error sadly by the looks of this one :( so far. But lets wait for more footage and seems the tail section is in good condition at the crash site so recovery of the black boxes shouldn't be an issue and then they can check the FDR and CVR (flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder) to confirm the take off configuration and what alarms can be heard were going off on the CVR and what was being said by the pilots, seems they did send a mayday too, but at what point of the take off.

The 787 Dreamliner is a good plane and not like the Max series that had their issues and poor Pilot training requirements from Boeing regarding the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).

Sad day seeing another commercial airliner accident that could have been avoided from what has been shown and said so far. RIP to the passengers and crew. :(

The sink rate just before impact is much higher than at the start of the video, and this would be consistent with falling airspeed. Given the RAT-like noise and the fact the plane is sinking followed by a rapid drop just before impact, it would suggest dual engine failure. Even with the heat around the airport, just one of those engines could have kept the aircraft climbing, albeit slower. A touch unfair to blame the pilots at the moment.
 
As someone who flies a lot, watching that footage of the plane going down was truly horrific. Felt hairs on the back of my neck as the smoke and flames rose up.
 
A lot of airports are surrounded by residential areas. London City is great example. The old Hong Kong airport required extra pilot qualifications to land or take off large aircraft as they had to slalom high rise buildings

I realise that I just think it crazy not to not have at least ground around for miles for a situation like this so it could just dump down, doubt it would save people on board though still.
 
From the video in the ops post the flaps do look to be up and not correctly configured for take off. Also you can see the plane sink and that is the behaviour expected and has been seen many times when planes take off configured incorrectly for take off. Many such accidents have happened and ended up in this manner and the plane reached a maximum altitude of 620-625 feet according to some flight tracking sites.

Pilot/copilot error sadly by the looks of this one :( so far. But lets wait for more footage and seems the tail section is in good condition at the crash site so recovery of the black boxes shouldn't be an issue and then they can check the FDR and CVR (flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder) to confirm the take off configuration and what alarms can be heard were going off on the CVR and what was being said by the pilots, seems they did send a mayday too, but at what point of the take off.

The 787 Dreamliner is a good plane and not like the Max series that had their issues and poor Pilot training requirements from Boeing regarding the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).

Sad day seeing another commercial airliner accident that could have been avoided from what has been shown and said so far. RIP to the passengers and crew. :(

I've watched that video and I honesty can't tell from the footage whether they were up or down.

I don't know about the 787 but the 737 has a procedure for if the flaps are inadvertently raised after take-off. Essentially you reselect flaps 1, and apply as much thrust as needed (all of it, if you can). I can't tell from the video but it doesn't sound like the engines are ramping up.

Edit: Just to add - if they have inadvertently stalled the aircraft through an incorrect flaps retraction, I'd expect the engines on that aircraft to be screaming.
 
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The sink rate just before impact is much higher than at the start of the video, and this would be consistent with falling airspeed. Given the RAT-like noise and the fact the plane is sinking followed by a rapid drop just before impact, it would suggest dual engine failure. Even with the heat around the airport, just one of those engines could have kept the aircraft climbing, albeit slower. A touch unfair to blame the pilots at the moment.

Not blaming mate, there is sadly no blame to anyone on board a doomed flight, just what has been shown on a video shows the plane configured incorrectly for take off, the flaps look up, if they were up the plane will sink in that manner and a fully fuelled heavy full flight, 242 people on board, so a very busy flight and a lot of fuel to get it to UK and a lot of baggage and passengers too.

This flight pattern from take off to crash site has been seen many times, with planes either not configured correctly for take off, de-icing not done correctly and wing contamination causing the same result or as stated by yourself maybe engine/power issues either failing or maybe not even set correctly for take off. Sink rate being higher at impact is because the plane was stalling due to not enough lift (incorrect take off flaps to generate lift at slower speeds) or engine speed/power, it was in a nose up as it came down and never got above 625 feet and only way out of a stall is nose down to increase airspeed over the wings to get lift and stop the stall and increasing engine power, but you can't do that nose down maneuver at 625 feet .. Only thing left is full power and set the correct flaps for that speed.

Just another sad accident, what the final report will say sadly if they find the plane configured incorrectly for take off is pilot error, why I state pilot error.. Not blaming the pilots as no pilot wants to end up this way and his/her passengers and crew. Just a horrific scenario of errors/failures in some form, be it man/woman, machine or weather. That need to be figured out to prevent future accidents in the same manner. That is sadly the only good that will come out of such incidents is learning the issues and cause and knowing how to prevent them in the future to save future lives.

I'm horrified every time I hear on the news another commercial airliner has had a serious accident :( and the horrific scenes of the accident and the families and friends destroyed by such events.

Lets wait and see what the official reason is without guessing the full reasons, but that video the op posted sadly says a lot and with the FDR,CVR and that video, it will confirm the real reason.
 
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I realise that I just think it crazy not to not have at least ground around for miles for a situation like this so it could just dump down, doubt it would save people on board though still.
We had a discussion on here before about that flight that hit stuff at the end of the runway. General conclusion was that you have to have a line somewhere. You could say for safety that a runway has to be 20 miles long with nothing in it's path. Unrealistic.
 
Not blaming mate, there is sadly no blame to anyone on board a doomed flight, just what has been shown on a video shows the plane configured incorrectly for take off, the flaps look up, if they were up the plane will sink in that manner and a fully fuelled heavy full flight, 242 people on board, so a very busy flight and a lot of fuel to get it to UK and a lot of baggage and passengers too.

This flight pattern from take off to crash site has been seen many times, with planes either not configured correctly for take off, de-icing not done correctly and wing contamination causing the same result or as stated by yourself maybe engine/power issues either failing or maybe not even set correctly for take off. Sink rate being higher at impact is because the plane was stalling due to not enough lift (incorrect take off flaps to generate lift at slower speeds) or engine speed/power, it was in a nose up as it came down and never got above 625 feet and only way out of a stall is nose down to increase airspeed over the wings to get lift and stop the stall and increasing engine power, but you can't do that nose down maneuver at 625 feet .. Only thing left is full power and set the correct flaps for that speed.

Just another sad accident, what the final report will say sadly if they find the plane configured incorrectly for take off is pilot error, why I state pilot error.. Not blaming the pilots as no pilot wants to end up this way and his/her passengers and crew. Just a horrific scenario of errors/failures in some form, be it man/woman, machine or weather. That need to be figured out to prevent future accidents in the same manner. That is sadly the only good that will come out of such incidents is learning the issues and cause and knowing how to prevent them in the future to save future lives.

I'm horrified every time I hear on the news another commercial airliner has had a serious accident :( and the horrific scenes of the accident and the families and friends destroyed by such events.

Lets wait and see what the official reason is without guessing the full reasons, but that video the op posted sadly says a lot and with the FDR,CVR and that video, it will confirm the real reason.

An incorrect flap retraction is one thing - one pilot says 'gear up' and the other in a moment of inattention raises the flaps - it's happened before a number of times. There are mitigations against that now.

However - there's no way a B787 took off with an incorrect flap setting. It will, quite literally, verbally shout at you not to do it.
 
I've watched that video and I honesty can't tell from the footage whether they were up or down.

I don't know about the 787 but the 737 has a procedure for if the flaps are inadvertently raised after take-off. Essentially you reselect flaps 1, and apply as much thrust as needed (all of it, if you can). I can't tell from the video but it doesn't sound like the engines are ramping up.

Edit: Just to add - if they have inadvertently stalled the aircraft through an incorrect flaps retraction, I'd expect the engines on that aircraft to be screaming.

Would the flight control system of a modern airliner like an 787 allow you to retract the flaps if that would take you below the stall speed on the flight director? I would have thought there would have been some sort of interlock to prevent that.
 
My condolences are with all those who have been affected. It’s a very sad day.

I thought the 787 cockpit doesn’t have gear level/flap lever nearby? They’re in different locations?
 
An incorrect flap retraction is one thing - one pilot says 'gear up' and the other in a moment of inattention raises the flaps - it's happened before a number of times. There are mitigations against that now.

However - there's no way a B787 took off with an incorrect flap setting. It will, quite literally, verbally shout at you not to do it.

That's why I said we need the CVR so we can hear the alarms if they sounded and also the FDR as that will show the take off settings and any alarms triggered. They never got high or fast enough by the looks of the take off to do a gears up procedure correctly.

I agree with what you are saying about that type of accident where a pilot/copilot incorrectly makes that mistake you mention, but you need to be in a safe steady take off speed and gaining altitude correctly before gears up, that doesn't look that way from that video and as mentioned a mayday was called, so if the pilot(s) knew of an issue and losing altitude or/and air speed quickly at low altitude they will keep the gears down to try cause the landing gear to absorb more of the impact.
 
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Awful. Condolences to the friends and families of all those involved. Is there any word yet on how many casualties there are among people at the crash site? Apparently it hit a hostel for medical staff, have to hope they were all at work when the plane hit.
 
The anti stall would have had the engines at max throttle they don’t sound like that in the video. The nose is raised almost like a flare, tbh to me it looks like the plane thinks it is landing possibly a similar situation to the French one that landed in a forest. Who knows bit weird though…..
 
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Would the flight control system of a modern airliner like an 787 allow you to retract the flaps if that would take you below the stall speed on the flight director? I would have thought there would have been some sort of interlock to prevent that.

I honestly don't know as I've never flown a FBW aircraft.

However my gut feeling would be to say no, for two reasons.

One is that the complexity of calculating the stall speed for a flaps setting that has not yet been selected may prevent such a system from being practical. Stall speed is calculated from any number of variables (mainly AoA) and these can change in a manner that may not be predictable when the flap setting changes.

The other is the Boeing have quite a different design philosophy, to say Airbus. There tends to be assumption that a well trained crew won't make such mistakes. But as I say - I'm not rated on the 787 so don't know for sure.

Edit: It's a bit more complicated than AoA
 
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Apparently it hit a hostel for medical staff

Not to take away from this tragedy, but having dealt with a LOT of Indian people in my time, I'll need some concrete evidence of this before I believe it. On the honesty scale, Indians make Nigerians look like Danes.
 
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My condolences are with all those who have been affected. It’s a very sad day.

I thought the 787 cockpit doesn’t have gear level/flap lever nearby? They’re in different locations?

To an extent - they’re also different shapes, with the gear handle shaped like a wheel and the flap handle shaped like a flap for this very reason. Like everything in aviation, it’s born out of experience of human factors.

It doesn’t stop humans being human though, but I don’t think this is what’s happened in this instance.
 
The anti stall would have had the engines at max throttle they don’t sound like that in the video. The nose is raised almost like a flare, tbh to me it looks like the plane thinks it is landing possibly a similar situation to the French one that landed in a forest. Who knows bit weird though…..
That was an airbus A320 (1988, June 26th) at the air show in France. It was doing a fly over at the time that went wrong as can be seen from the video below. Cause was pilot error, but anyone that knows the story, knows the pilot stated the plane took over and caused the crash. Also poor flight charts and planning caused that incident at that air show, all was rushed and well results were an accident.


Video from Mayday, with a full explanation.

LINK to video. As YouTube will not allow the video to be shown on another site.
 
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Would the flight control system of a modern airliner like an 787 allow you to retract the flaps if that would take you below the stall speed on the flight director? I would have thought there would have been some sort of interlock to prevent that.
No Boeing aircraft prevent "early" retraction of flaps; Airbus do, however.
 
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