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

theguardian.com

291–300 of 633 posts

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

#291

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.

Yeah, I think I might wait for the MentourPilot take on this one. I can't see any benefit in speculating. Horrifying that it came down in a residential area with almost all its fuel still on board though. The aftermath is beyond belief.

9/11 showed us the damages of a plane crash with a full load of fuel can do and goes to show why dumping fuel is part of the procedures when planes are coming inf for a landing under "strained" conditions.

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

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pro tip from an absolute rando: don’t bother with any source of breaking news. Read a weekly paper that summarises the important stuff. If something is truly pressing, you’ll hear about it from friends or coworkers.

Unfortunately for everyone's brains, this turned out to basically not be true with COVID- only real news fans (or people with expertise in the relevant science, but there are way less of those) were remotely aware that offices probably weren't going to be closed for only two weeks[0]. If you followed the news closely you stocked up on toilet paper when there were runs on it in Hong Kong, before there were runs on it…

That was pure panic. I live in the gulf coast. Anytime there is a minor chance we are getting hit by a hurricane people panic buy and suddenly there isn't any water on the shelves anymore. You'll see average folks with 20 cases of water being shoved in their massive SUVs for a family of 3.

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

#293

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.

It's also possible to just not read news altogether.

Totally agreed.

I stopped reading/watching/listening to the news about 2 years ago and I am blissfully unaware of what is going on in the world. I read hacker news every once in a while and even comment on some of the stories shown here but I select very strictly the topics I interact with.

News organizations these days are all pushing an agenda. Whether it is pro [insert-topic-of-choice-here] or against [insert-topic-of-choice-here] and that irks me when they represent themselves as impartial and unbiased.

If I want to read some propaganda, I know where to find it.

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

#294

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.

Pro tip from an absolute rando: don’t bother with any source of breaking news. Read a weekly paper that summarises the important stuff. If something is truly pressing, you’ll hear about it from friends or coworkers.

Suggestions for some sources to read? I know the Economist, anything else others would recommend?

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

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe globally it's an average year but the DCA crash alone makes it an extraordinary year in US commercial aviation. Not all crashes are created equal. A 10 person Cessna disappearing near Nome, Alaska !== mid-air collision above the Potomac. If you're looking at US news sources, I don't think you need to resort to clickbait and fearmongering to justify the increased focus.

There is a media difference though since the DCA crash. Military and small planes ( On a personal level, I know three people that have died in small plane crashes in the Alaska wilderness in the last 15 years, which is so common that it didn't even get on local news. I have acquaintances that were in involved in two others elsewhere over the last few years. Small planes are unbelievably dangerous. Commercial jets, no…

> My point is the same, media sees crash, tries to drive clickage.

In 2012, in a rush to break the news, WGN 9 in Chicago mistook the set of Chicago Fire tv show for a real crash.

https://q1057.com/news-anchor-mistakes-movie-set-for-plane-c...

https://metro.co.uk/2012/12/01/plane-crash-telly-as-chicago-...

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

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recommend this; instead, I recommend reading factual reporting, not 'analysis' which often comes with inherent political bent/bias.

Why? I went news cold turkey about 6 years ago and I'm very happy with that decision.

Because not everyone is privileged enough to be able to ignore news.

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

#297
post #64
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The engines power the hydraulic actuators in an aircraft an aircraft of that size cannot be trivially controlled without that hydraulic system. The APU should have been started to provide backup power in the case of engine failure but during take-off there is already very little time to do anything and it's possible that the sudden workload overloaded both the pilot and copilot or some other human factors were involv…

There is a video circulating that the air con was off on the previous flight - that might indicate why the APU was off for the crash flight as well.

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

#298

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.

You mean like the official report that gave us the magic bullet theory?

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

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lar…

> "4 smaller but equally efficient engines" feels like a unicorn With turbines, yes, for fundamental reasons. With electric motors, on the other hand, perhaps not, though not particularly relevant to a long-haul route like AMD-LON.

True. Also the electric/turboprop propulsion compromises like Heart Aerospace's that trade off the limitations of the respective powerplants by fitting pairs of both. But that's a different use case...

(I get to write about arrayed space thrusters in the day job too, but again, fundamentally different physics and goals...)

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

#300
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Fligh…

Ryanair FR 4102 apparently happened in 2008, not March. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair_Flight_4102
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