Air India Crash

Can atmospheric pressure play a part in a plane like this seemingly take a lot of runway and then suffer once airborne.

I'm asking as an armchair expert only.

Only really if you are flying under a cumulonimbus cloud or even more stupid within it. You can get downdraughts which equate to several thousand feet per minute. There have been accidents before where planes have flown through these on approach only to be pushed into the ground and game over. Even jets.

Every time you fly you always try and take off into the wind and every flight will be flight performance tested using the POH (Pilots operating hand book) plus local airfield information or computer based with jets.

Once you have all the required information you can work out how long your take off run will be (TORA or TODA) and your accelerated stop distance (ASDA) which is the distance from accelerating to V1 (The point of no return) then to stopping.
 
Yeah jumped on the flaps bandwagon without evidence and is now backtracking.

I wouldn't say jumping on the bandwagon just taking what information was there at the available time and providing a logical answer. Changing your opinion based on new information available is the sign of a good pilot rather than using confirmation bias to get the result you want.
 
Just to add some context to a engine software fault, the following occurred sometime ago with a different aircraft but with a similar implementation of the TCMA feature.


In, short the software commanded both engines to idle immediately after the aircraft touched down. In this case it was linked to the air/ground logic which senses whether the aircraft is in flight or on the ground, and in this case only occurred in ground mode.
 
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Has it been confirmed that the RAT was depoloyed?
Sort of, lots of people are very very convinced by the higher quality version of the flyby video given the distinctive noise and the small object visible below the fuselage but nothing official has been said.

I don't think there's likely to be any imminent confirmation or official reports either way when it comes to the cause.
 
Sort of, lots of people are very very convinced by the higher quality version of the flyby video given the distinctive noise and the small object visible below the fuselage but nothing official has been said.

I don't think there's likely to be any imminent confirmation or official reports either way when it comes to the cause.
I must admit, I’m rather convinced by the higher quality video showing a small object exactly where the RAT should be. But will await official confirmation.

I suspect those on the ground investigating this know already.
 
According to avherald, the update today states :



I have no idea if this would be normal or if it points to something not right with the engines even before it got airborne.

Using all the runway is quite normal. It's means that you don't have to drive the engines as hard which lowers the turbine temperatures which then massively improves the life of the engine.
 
I must admit, I’m rather convinced by the higher quality video showing a small object exactly where the RAT should be. But will await official confirmation.

I suspect those on the ground investigating this know already.

The higher quality video with much better audio too, clearly makes clear the RAT sound is there. When I first saw that video the audio was not great and clearly now being said was recorded of a screen not the original video.

When I watched the original video I said Flaps not configured correctly as maybe wrong take off configuration regarding flaps and throttle.

Now watching the better quality video I still state Flaps are up but now clearly hear the RAT and can't rule out engine failure, power failure to the flight surfaces.. Getting more and more confusing to the full real events, without seeing the FDR and CVR data and hearing the cockpit.

Hope they release this data quickly now as this will confirm what has happened, then we can rule out the pilots pulling the flaps up before the gear mistake and rule out the flaps were not even correctly set before take off and even throttles not set correctly for take off speed etc etc.

Sadly nothing really new we know apart from this better quality video out of the window, the ATC CCTV video is pretty bad too and the zooming on the video and that hut on the air field hiding seconds of things that may have happened where the camera can't see the plane. If they have more ATC Air Field CCTV they should release the originals too to all cameras showing the full take off from the Piano lines (if it was at that point on start of take off) to being in the air.
 
The higher quality video with much better audio too, clearly makes clear the RAT sound is there. When I first saw that video the audio was not great and clearly now being said was recorded of a screen not the original video.

When I watched the original video I said Flaps not configured correctly as maybe wrong take off configuration regarding flaps and throttle.

Now watching the better quality video I still state Flaps are up but now clearly hear the RAT and can't rule out engine failure, power failure to the flight surfaces.. Getting more and more confusing to the full real events, without seeing the FDR and CVR data and hearing the cockpit.

Hope they release this data quickly now as this will confirm what has happened, then we can rule out the pilots pulling the flaps up before the gear mistake and rule out the flaps were not even correctly set before take off and even throttles not set correctly for take off speed etc etc.

Sadly nothing really new we know apart from this better quality video out of the window, the ATC CCTV video is pretty bad too and the zooming on the video and that hut on the air field hiding seconds of things that may have happened where the camera can't see the plane. If they have more ATC Air Field CCTV they should release the originals too to all cameras showing the full take off from the Piano lines (if it was at that point on start of take off) to being in the air.

Possibly lost hydraulic power so were unable to adjust flaps? Could also explain the failure to retract the gear?
 
Possibly lost hydraulic power so were unable to adjust flaps? Could also explain the failure to retract the gear?
You wouldn't be adjusting flaps at that point.

Flaps and slats are clearly out in the phone video (looks like a flaps 5 takeoff so barely any trailing edge flaps visible). Dual engine failure of unknown origin is pretty much the only thing it's going to be.
 
I see a lot of posts with people saying that the landing gear is in a position in line with what it would be during retraction. It's done at what, 50 feet? Could be that triggered some mass failure somehow.
 
The higher quality video with much better audio too, clearly makes clear the RAT sound is there. When I first saw that video the audio was not great and clearly now being said was recorded of a screen not the original video.

When I watched the original video I said Flaps not configured correctly as maybe wrong take off configuration regarding flaps and throttle.

Now watching the better quality video I still state Flaps are up but now clearly hear the RAT and can't rule out engine failure, power failure to the flight surfaces.. Getting more and more confusing to the full real events, without seeing the FDR and CVR data and hearing the cockpit.

Hope they release this data quickly now as this will confirm what has happened, then we can rule out the pilots pulling the flaps up before the gear mistake and rule out the flaps were not even correctly set before take off and even throttles not set correctly for take off speed etc etc.

Sadly nothing really new we know apart from this better quality video out of the window, the ATC CCTV video is pretty bad too and the zooming on the video and that hut on the air field hiding seconds of things that may have happened where the camera can't see the plane. If they have more ATC Air Field CCTV they should release the originals too to all cameras showing the full take off from the Piano lines (if it was at that point on start of take off) to being in the air.

There are several flap positions on the 787 where they only extend away from the wing rather than downwards, so would be difficult to see in the angles on the current footage. There's also pictures of the wing which appear to show the flaps extended as well.

Possibly lost hydraulic power so were unable to adjust flaps? Could also explain the failure to retract the gear?

Could also be major electrical loss. The 787 has a 'more-electrical' architecture with a good number of the hydraulic pumps driven electrically rather than directly from the engine.
 
Apparently if a FADEC shutsdown, then the engine will do too. Unless there is a manual over-ride availability to the system then everything the engine does goes through the FADEC. It should have redundancy though, so you would like to think, but having all system fail would be quite something.

My initial thoughts on seeing the original footage released was engine failure. To me you can see it on the CCTV footage, it rotates to lift, the engine thrust kicks up the dust, starts climb then aircraft just eases out of power and into glide. There is no fight from the plane to climb, which if you had power, you would see.
 
I would ask, if the FADEC shuts down, would the engines simply roll back without any computer input.
This would have to be beyond catastrophic. As I've said earlier, engine control is self-powered; if the engine is spinning, the engine control is powered. It's not linked at all to the aircraft's main or emergency electrical systems.
 
This would have to be beyond catastrophic. As I've said earlier, engine control is self-powered; if the engine is spinning, the engine control is powered. It's not linked at all to the aircraft's main or emergency electrical systems.
FADEC requires the central computer to give it instructions. If the aircraft goes electrically dead on rotation , it would explain both the lack of replies after the mayday call, the rat being deployed, the apu autostartup and the engine roll back. Both black boxes have been found so the answers will come
 
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