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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

#241

Post by traceroute66 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #25

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.

> Gentle tip from a lifelong aviation enthusiast: wait one week before reading on causation.

One week ?

Wait until the damn official report comes out. That's how long you should wait.

The investigators have access to more than you or any other armchair investigator or journalist will ever do.

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

#242

Post by closewith »

ajross wrote: post #220
closewith wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think there's ever been a double-bird-strike incident, though. What? It happens multiple times a year. They made a movie about a famous incident (US Airways Flight 1549). There's even events with four engine strike (Eastern Air Lines Flight 375).

While the counterexample is a real gaff on my part, it's 100% Absolutely Not True that there are "multiple" airliner total thrust failures every year.

That wasn't your claim, though. You spoke of double-bird-strikes, of which there are multiple per year.

So far this year, it's happened at least twice resulting in engine failure.

Jan - Air New Zealand NZ207 - aborted take off following dual bird strikes and both engines damaged.

~~Mar - Ryanair FR 4102 - dual bird strikes on landing resulting in injuries and hull loss.~~

Before that, in December 2024, Jeju Air Flight 2216 crashed on landing following dual bird strikes, resulting in the loss of all PAX.

These aren't as rare as you believe they are.

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

#243

Post by bgirard »

blitzar wrote: post #102
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #25

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.

Pro tip from a lifelong life enthusiast: if its breaking news, wait one week - first-week speculation isn’t just unproductive, it’s often counterproductive. Flick through last weeks newspaper if you need reassurance.

I agree with that wholeheartedly. The problem is that people want to discuss today's news now. Explaining them this and not being able to engage in the conversation isn't a great way to connect with people unfortunately.

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

#244

Post by Larrikin »

sofixa wrote: post #194
iamtheworstdev wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because painting an entire neighborhood in flammable fluid isn't safe... if it doesn't catch fire it'll corrode everything it touches. most planes can't dump fuel anymore. if it's a serious enough emergency you land overweight. If it's not then you fly long enough to burn it off and land below max landing weight.

> most planes can't dump fuel anymore. if it's a serious enough emergency you land overweight. When fuel is dumped, it's at high altitude where it just evaporates. Short haul jets can't do it, but their max takeoff weight is around their max landing weight, so it's fine. For long haul, it's not the same.

Are both opposing replies just wild speculation from two educated software engineers that don't actually know anything on the topic?

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

#245

Post by aceofspades19 »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #137
aipatselarom wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy's just asking if four engines instead of two would have made a difference? It's curiosity, it's learning, it's looking for an explanation. That's exactly the kind of comment that deserves to be here. >[...] who doesn't have any relevant expertise, Is that a requirement to comment on this thread? Do you fulfill that requirement you brought in?

That is entirely where I'm coming from - plane designs from the past had longer wingspans and supported 4 engines. Engines have gotten more efficient and powerful so cross-ocean routes don't need 4 engines anymore. So I was wondering what if current plane designs had 4 smaller but equally as efficient engines instead of 2. The vast majority of airplane accidents happen at takeoff or landings, if some of those can be…

It's not only that engines have gotten more efficient and powerful, its that they have also increased the reliability. The other issue is that 4 engines share almost all of the failure modes that 2 engines do. If you have 2 engines that fail that are on opposite sides of the aircraft, having 2 others isn't going to help as its likely a system failure in the aircraft or a fault in that particular model of the engine that could affect all of them. For example, if you run of fuel or have a failure in the fuel delivery system, it's not going to matter if you have 2, 4 or more engines. The mistake is thinking the probability of a 4 engine failure is significantly less than 2 engine failure for all types of failures.

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

#246

Post by brunohaid »

epolanski wrote: post #235
brunohaid wrote: post #28

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…

> gear out That is normal and standard procedure if you're having issues lifting the plane, because retracting the gear means _increasing_ drag for a crucial 10/15 seconds as the doors open and thus slowing the plane further. > but no flaps and no control inputs visible Standard Dreamliner operating procedure, you take off at flaps 10 or 5, they are barely visible from the outside, see many random videos of 787s take…

True on both counts, was a quite early comment and initially thought they're coming back in to land vs barely having taken off. Only leaves control inputs but given how short the video is it could also be that there simply wasn't much to input/correct anymore despite the slight rocking.

Can't edit anymore, but the general gist of catastrophic failure needed to prevent a 787 from climbing out of this situation still holds.

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

#247

Post by cschmatzler »

CPLX wrote: post #209
SecretDreams wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's footage after takeoff of it descending with the air ram deployed, no engine power, gears down, and flaps up. TBD on the cause, but loss of engines for some reason seems to be the case. I do agree that a lot of info comes out first week that isn't all right. I'm just reciting what's been shown in videos.

Do you have a link to that footage? I've seen speculation on this from very blurry video but nothing like proof. On the professional pilot forums the consensus guess is inadvertent flap retraction, instead of gear retraction, leading to inability to climb.

A 787 can still climb with flaps up and two healthy engines. In the video that was posted everywhere, you can CLEARLY hear the RAT spin, which gets deployed automatically when both engines go out.

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

#248

Post by atonse »

bgirard wrote: post #243
blitzar wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pro tip from a lifelong life enthusiast: if its breaking news, wait one week - first-week speculation isn’t just unproductive, it’s often counterproductive. Flick through last weeks newspaper if you need reassurance.

I agree with that wholeheartedly. The problem is that people want to discuss today's news now. Explaining them this and not being able to engage in the conversation isn't a great way to connect with people unfortunately.

I suppose one way (now that you've brought this up, which is totally valid), is to openly state that this is what we know right now, and that often changes in a week.

And that could itself be a tangent in the conversation, alternate theories. (Or might be a frustrating one if nobody is receptive)

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

#249

Post by notahacker »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #151
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is entirely where I'm coming from - plane designs from the past had longer wingspans and supported 4 engines. Engines have gotten more efficient and powerful so cross-ocean routes don't need 4 engines anymore. So I was wondering what if current plane designs had 4 smaller but equally as efficient engines instead of 2. The vast majority of airplane accidents happen at takeoff or landings, if some of those can be…

> was wondering what if current plane designs had 4 smaller but equally as efficient engines instead of 2 Impossible to answer until we know the cause. If it was independent powerplant failures, then yes. If it was e.g. fuel contamination, pilots improperly shutting down the engine, some other crap failing, then no. Speaking as someone with aerospace engineering and GA pilot experience.

Current speculation around the raising of flaps suggests that independent engine failures weren't the cause. Proper investigation with access to better data than grainy video will tell us if that is the case and why.

"4 smaller but equally efficient engines" feels like a unicorn though (we'll probably get to the point in future where four large engines are superior in efficiency to two of today's engines, but two large engines to that latest design will still be more efficient than four smaller ones...)

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

#250

Post by consp »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #208
ihuk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a Reddit video: https://www.reddit.com/r/ahmedabad/comments/1l9i1ga/om_shant... And here's a YouTube video showing a Ram Air Turbine (RAT) being deployed on a 787 for comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFBCGf50Trc&t=69s

I don't see the RAT deployed on the video on Reddit. Can you tell the timestamp to zoom in? I'm super curious.

Those things are tiny and very transparent (since it's pretty much a propeller) and video compression, plus it's a video of a screen, will eat it up against a clear sky.
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