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Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

theguardian.com

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Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#51
post #36

Baffling tragedy, again. Clear skies, no LiveATC but reports of single Mayday call, gear out but no flaps and no control inputs visible in the grainy video. Something has to go really catastrophically wrong with a modern jetliner for that to happen, like the very dense flock of birds in Korea with the 737 a couple of months back. The very short intersection takeoff seems like a good hint (and terrible practice), but…

What do you mean by "(and terrible practice)"?

it means using less then the full length of runaway available. I'm not a pilot but i'm guessing that it's not good because it adds an unnecessary potential complication to the take off.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#52
post #4

I will reserve my judgement but Boeing can’t catch a break.

[flagged]

You have absolutely no idea what caused this crash (which looks a lot like a bird strike) and yet you’re calling for people to be jailed.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#53

Seems like they lost power? https://x.com/georgiameloniii/status/1933091545248641248

Going OT: why a parody account of Italian PM is tweeting a video about an airplane accident in India? Really weird

The account is run from India.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#54
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of Boeing, but let's not start pointing fingers yet. We know literally nothing about what caused the accident yet, and the 787 Dreamliner has a stellar record: it's been flying since 2011, with over 1000 in service, and I believe this is its first ever major accident.

737 Max also had stellar records and then they started crashing one after other. Boeing has earned this reputation. Also as per information from twitter pilot did called mayday immediately after takeoff, so high chance of technical issues in aircraft.

The two are not remotely comparable. The 737 MAX entered commercial service in mid-2017 and had fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, both with aircraft that were only a few months old, out of a total fleet in the tens of aircraft.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#56
post #36

Baffling tragedy, again. Clear skies, no LiveATC but reports of single Mayday call, gear out but no flaps and no control inputs visible in the grainy video. Something has to go really catastrophically wrong with a modern jetliner for that to happen, like the very dense flock of birds in Korea with the 737 a couple of months back. The very short intersection takeoff seems like a good hint (and terrible practice), but…

What do you mean by "(and terrible practice)"?

An intersection takeoff is a takeoff where you do not use the full length of the runway. When you are a large aeroplane with a full load, reaching the necessary takeoff speeds required to rotate (pull up and begin lifting from the ground) can take longer than normal, at which point the climb speed will also be reduced if not properly compensated for (e.g. you miscalculate something and set the wrong elevator trim/takeoff thrust/something else).

When you are taking off, you have a short portion of the runway which you can use to abort the takeoff depending on failures, but that portion can become even shorter depending on the length of the runway.

Usually the first part of takeoff you would abort for almost any reason, and the second part you would only abort in a serious emergency, once you reach a certain point you simply cannot afford to abort because you will not stop in time to crash into whatever is at the end of the runway at which point you must take-off even if you are going to immediately request an emergency landing afterwards.

So if you are heavily loaded, with a lot of people on board, and you do an intersection takeoff, you are taking a risk that if you made a mistake or something goes wrong you will not have the ability to safely recover. That's why it's a terrible practice in this case. All it does is save a little bit of time which would be spent taxiing to the actual start of the runway.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#57
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pilot speculated that it looks like a multiple bird strike.

Why no control inputs then? Surely, the plane could still be commanded in absence of engine power.

But also how long after take off do you retract the flaps? Can it be a pilot error (took off without flaps?). It happened more than once in the past, though I thought a modern plane like the dreamliner would make that mistake nearly impossible.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#59

Gentle tip from a lifelong aviation enthusiast: wait one week before reading on causation. Exposing yourself to first-week speculation isn’t just unproductive, it’s often counterproductive since the actual findings can rhyme with the false speculation closely enough that you wind up muddling the two in your mind.

I hate so much how whenever something bad happens there's a huge rush to come up with theories that place the blame on some group or ideology you already hated for unrelated reasons. I've stopped paying attention to the news in part because I don't like how disingenuously giddy people get whenever there's a mass-casualty event. I don't even mind morbid curiosity about death and suffering but nobody should ever see it as a benefit to their chosen group-identity.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#60
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pilot speculated that it looks like a multiple bird strike.

Why no control inputs then? Surely, the plane could still be commanded in absence of engine power.

I don't really know enough about this, but what would you expect the pilots to do with that control if they don't have any thrust? Unless there was a suitable landing spot very, very close I don't see what they could do even if they have full control of the plane. There is nothing they can do except getting the engines to work to avoid a crash, the only thing controls would give them is the option to choose a slightly different place to crash.
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