I can’t imagine the mental and emotional scars that he will have after that. Hopefully he survives that too.
Likely a heavy load of survivors guilt to deal with ahead.
I’m not saying he has superhuman powers, but isn’t this the plot of that Bruce Willis film Unbreakable?
1 Like
There’s another video of the takeoff role, they used every inch of runway and still didn’t have enough speed, it was 100F out, very hot thin air not enough speed or maybe no flaps. 
So the obvious question is, why would a bird that large be cleared for takeoff if conditions prohibited?
That doesn’t comport with the survivor saying he heard a loud bang before the drop. I have to assume mechanical failure inhibited their launch speed in the worst possible conditions?
Someone else agrees with you.
Former pilot says deadly Air India plane crash was most likely due to pilot error
The pilot was clear that it is speculation at this point, but it jumped out to you as well.
minor correction - 189 feet above sea level
1 Like
Thank you a little more than a minor mistake on my part, post edited.
Pilot error seems most likely here. First, the electronic checklist is going to compare flap position to what they are, so that would result in not showing green on the checklist. And even if they moved on with the checklist not showing green, they should get a take off config warning on the display when they throttled up. This was a very hot day, so they should have known they would need lots of flaps.
Also, the crash footage looks like the flaps were up, but gear being down is also really strange. Since the same hydraulic system, center, would retract flaps and landing gear. So a failure of the center hydraulic system would prevent landing gear retraction, but then you couldn’t retract the flaps (you could extend the flaps with a failed center system).
Ok, so what could cause the inability to retract gear, but allow putting up the flaps. The landing gear has a priority valve that shuts off hydraulic flow the main landing gear when hydraulic pressure in the center system drops below ~4000 psi. So if lots of flight control demand, like retracting flaps and controlling a plane barely airborne, no hydraulic pressure would go to main landing gear. So even if the landing gear was commanded to retract, the gear would stay down. Of course, that would not prevent the nose landing gear from retracing and we see that down. I can’t think of any other single failure that would allow flap retraction, but not landing gear retraction.
Pilots are also trained to command gear retraction basically immediately after they get positive rate of climb, because the huge drag reduction you get from retracted landing gear. Maybe they just never got positive rate of climb? Which once again points to the flaps not being down at takeoff.
Now there are times where pilots will leave the gear down for longer after take off for things like brake cooling, but that is really rare and would be if the plane had a really short turn around from the last landing. That would be crazy if that was a factor here.
Also, the gear have a placard speed of 270 knots, so they shouldn’t be retracted above that speed, think doors tearing off, they can stay down above 270 kts, but can’t retract above it. Why I bring that up, I don’t remember the exact numbers here, but with the flaps up, a 787-8 loaded for long flight is going to struggle to fly below that speed. Also the tires are rated to 240 kts, and taking off with flaps and on a hot day is going to require speeds around that.
So if they were up for take off, that would explain this. We don’t know why they were up.
This is so sad. I knew one day a 787 would have a fatal accident, it is inevitable, it happens to all planes.
3 Likes
Yup, this guy is on to something.
Also, a lot of times on some planes, full power is not used for take-offs if the runway is long and the plane is not at max gross take off weight. Could be that they used reduced power when they took off and the power was insufficient for the runway and the weight of the plane.
We need @JerseyBigfoot to chime in.
1 Like
The issue is that power is known when calculating the parameters for takeoff. The computer will take the weight, length of runway, air density, engine thrust, etc. So it wouldn’t have show good for a takeoff if the engine was not producing enough thrust.
Plus those calcs are conservative, because it must take into account engine failure.
Correct.
But, as always, if garbage in, then garbage out. Lots of ways that error can be introduced into the calcs.
The system is not foolproof.
In a few years a movie will be made, The Passenger in Seat 11A.
1 Like
Where do you think the “loud bang” reported by the survivor fits in?
You always have good info to offer in this realm. Would that bang correlate to any break or failure of a major system that would prohibit the pilot from doing something needed? I guess is it possible that it wasn’t pilot error and that the bang just didn’t allow the pilots to do something they needed or tried to do?
Speculation on a pilot forum that the bang was the RAT activating. Some debate whether that would be heard loudly by someone sitting in 11A, which is fairly far forward. I have no idea.
We also don’t know the timing of the loud bang. Was it when they reached peak altitude or was it like half a second before the main crash?
That’s what I was thinking, maybe the loud bang was just clipping something on their way down?
What is your background, for context, do you work in the aviation industry or are a pilot? You gave a lot of very detailed procedure and cause/effect info, just curious.
.
Unfortunately, everything l have said so far is hugely conjecture.
It could have been simultaneous bird ingestion on both engines as well. That could cause a bang too.
It does appear that a mayday or emergency radio call was issued, so the pilots were aware that something was very wrong.
No idea (with any certainty) what the bang was. I guess we will all find out soon enough once the data recorders are accessed.
1 Like