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Preliminary report into Air India crash released

bbc.co.uk

281–290 of 924 posts

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#281
post #18

> The EGT was observed to be rising for both engines indicating relight. Engine 1’s core deceleration stopped, reversed and started to progress to recovery. Engine 2 was able to relight but could not arrest core speed deceleration and re-introduced fuel repeatedly to increase core speed acceleration and recovery. I know it's probably not worth the hazmat tradeoff for such a rare event, but the F-16 has an EPU powered…

The F-16 EPU is to keep the flight controls powered so the plane doesn't immediately become uncontrollable following engine failure. The EPU doesn't provide thrust of any kind.

The 787 and nearly every other commercial aircraft with powered flight controls [1] (fly-by-wire or traditional) has emergency power available via RAT and/or APU, and any fly-by-wire aircraft has batteries to keep the flight control computers running through engine failure to power supply being restored by the RAT and/or APU. Due to its unusually high use of electrical systems, the 787 has particularly large lithium batteries for these cases. There is no need for an additional EPU because the emergency systems already work fine (and did their jobs as expected in this case). You just can't recover from loss of nearly all engine thrust at that phase of takeoff. [2]

1. The notable exceptions to having a RAT for emergency flight controls are the 737 and 747 variants prior to the 747-8. In the 747 case, the four engines would provide sufficient hydraulic power while windmilling in flight and thus no additional RAT would be necessary. The 737 has complete mechanical reversion for critical flight controls, and so can be flown without power of any kind. There is sufficient battery power to keep backup instruments running for beyond the maximum glide time from altitude - at which point the aircraft will have "landed" one way or another.

2. There is only one exception of a certified passenger aircraft with a system for separate emergency thrust. Mexicana briefly operated a special version of the early 727 which would be fitted with rocket assist boosters for use on particularly hot days to ensure that single-engine-out climb performance met certification criteria. Mexicana operated out of particularly "hot and high" airports like Mexico City, which significantly degrade aircraft performance. On the worst summer days, the performance degradation would have been severe enough that the maximum allowable passenger/baggage/fuel load would have been uneconomical without the margin provided by the emergency rockets. I'm not aware of them ever being used on a "real" flight emergency outside of the testing process, and I think any similar design today would face a much higher bar to reach certification.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#282
post #18

> The EGT was observed to be rising for both engines indicating relight. Engine 1’s core deceleration stopped, reversed and started to progress to recovery. Engine 2 was able to relight but could not arrest core speed deceleration and re-introduced fuel repeatedly to increase core speed acceleration and recovery. I know it's probably not worth the hazmat tradeoff for such a rare event, but the F-16 has an EPU powered…

The RAT was already out and doing its job. Adding hydrazine or a nuclear reactor isn't going to help matters when there's no thrust.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://ad.easa.europa.eu/ad/NM-18-33 well hold your horses there... from the FAA in their 2019 report linked above: > The Boeing Company (Boeing) received reports from operators of Model 737 airplanes that the fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged. The fuel control switches (or engine start switches) are installed on the control stand in the flight deck and used by the pilot to sup…

What is "01 second" as quoted above? If it's 1 second, you could possibly conclude that it was intentional. If it's 0.1 second you might think it was an accident and the lock was disengaged.

One second. (Runway four is frequently zero four because radios.)

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#284
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EDIT: Why is there no Cockpit Video Recorder? The days of limited storage are over. Pilots unions are dead against it.

Are you actually using a tragedy like this to launch an assault on organized labour?

Why is that outrageous?

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the exact CVR audio? The report says "one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff" which I interpreted to mean one of them noticed the engines shutting down, and asked the other if he did that.

Then he would have asked the other pilot why the engines are shutting down. It seems a lot more probable that he glanced at the switches before asking such an explicit question.

Without listening to the CVR audio and knowing what they actually said, there's no evidence either way, and AFAIK they have not released that.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#287
post #18

> The EGT was observed to be rising for both engines indicating relight. Engine 1’s core deceleration stopped, reversed and started to progress to recovery. Engine 2 was able to relight but could not arrest core speed deceleration and re-introduced fuel repeatedly to increase core speed acceleration and recovery. I know it's probably not worth the hazmat tradeoff for such a rare event, but the F-16 has an EPU powered…

The only solution I can think of is emergency parachutes. Like lots of them. would also be useful for other types of in air engine/control failures. At least it worked for me on Kerbal Space Program. At least sometimes.

Wouldn't be able to save a fully-loaded 787 in low & slow conditions because the area of canopies needed to deploy would be several acres. And they'd add several tonnes.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only solution I can think of is emergency parachutes. Like lots of them. would also be useful for other types of in air engine/control failures. At least it worked for me on Kerbal Space Program. At least sometimes.

There's precedent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_8qCTAjsDg [30s] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT58pzY41wA [15m] The Cirrus system is deployed by rockets, allowing it to function at a very low altitude. They say that you should deploy it no matter what altitude you are at, and it will add at least some friction. The system has a very impressive track record. However, at this altitude, with an airplane this heav…

This is for a tiny aircraft, not a jumbo jet. SF50 and the Honda Jet can autoland too.

Edit: I recently saw an SF50 YT video. It's pretty awesome with the V/X tail.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#289

> The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off. So the fuel supply was cut off intentionally. The swi…

> It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide. You're leaping into the minds of others and drawing conclusions of their intent. One of them moved the levers. It could've been an unplanned reaction, a terrible mistake, or it could've been intentional. We may never know the intention even with a comprehensive and complete investigation. To claim otherwise is arrogance.

The car equivalent is being on a highway and "mistakenly" pulling the hand brakes, except that there are 2 hand brakes and you need to first unlock both of them.

That's very hard to do by panic and mistake, if not impossible by design.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#290
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airlines are decades behind on tech. You can get satellite internet almost anywhere on the planet and GPS can give you ten-foot accurate positioning, but we've still _lost_ planes because we haven't mandated a system that sends the realtime position of the plane over the satellite internet. The days of limited storage are still going strong in the industry.

There are reasons they don’t. This is a deceptively difficult problem Cost is a big one (satellite data is still quite a bit more expensive than you think, especially with many stations) And by stations, I mean aircraft. There are a TON. Current constellations probably wouldn’t even be able to handle half the current aircraft transmitting all at once. Bandwidth, in the physical sense, becomes a limiting factor Covera…

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