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Air India Express 737 Hits ILS, Damages Wall on Departure, Flies for 4 Hours

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191–200 of 255 posts

Re: Air India Express 737 Hits ILS, Damages Wall on Departure, Flies for 4 Hours

#191
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had to expend the fuel as dumping is not always an option, when you have a tail strike you don't take risks at landing, consuming the fuel to reduce weight and minimize the risk of fire is a basic option.

Going to 36000 feet was taking a massive risk. I don’t think we have enough information yet to establish whether excessive weight was a factor.

Also, in a plane that cannot dump such as the 737, to burn off fuel one would prefer to stay in the thicker lower part of the troposphere. Going to altitude not only risks decompression, but it actually preserves the remaining fuel due to lower drag.

That is not a maneuver a pilot with a known-damaged aircraft would make to burn off fuel.

Re: Air India Express 737 Hits ILS, Damages Wall on Departure, Flies for 4 Hours

#192
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What caused them to retun in half way? Report says Trichy airport informed pilot about posssible damage to plane. Pilot ignored it saying everything is green. What happened in 4hrs to divert back to Mumbai is still mystery. Will be interesting to see full report

Is it possible that Dubai refused to let them land with a flyable but potentially pretty broken plane?

Do you think it's even theoretically possible that an air traffic controller will say "looks like you might be having trouble with your plane... we're not going to allow you to land here. Go elsewhere"

Re: Air India Express 737 Hits ILS, Damages Wall on Departure, Flies for 4 Hours

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most surprising part is, trichy to mumbai takes hardly 1hr flight time. What caused them to take 4hrs? In 4hrs, they could have landed in Dubai itself easily Being Indian, I agree with statement about AirIndia. I would never fly in AirIndia even if the ticket price is too low, laughably they usually cost way above than any other competitors.

"Being Indian, I agree with statement about AirIndia. I would never fly in AirIndia even if the ticket price is too low, laughably they usually cost way above than any other competitors." Since I have flown with Air India, would you mind being more specific? Are the statistics? My flights were okay. Okay, zero status miles credited at Star Alliance and a bit stingy with alcohol on board. But food and service was good…

I've flown on them thrice. All three flights were delayed, even when it was a 35 minute flight from Jaipur to Delhi (supposed to land at 9:00pm, landed at 11pm).

When I last checked, their website literally did not work (clicking the booking button after entering your details took you to a 404 not found page)

It's a disaster of an airline, especially when cheaper options such as Indigo are way more punctual

Re: Air India Express 737 Hits ILS, Damages Wall on Departure, Flies for 4 Hours

#194

Question for professional pilots here: does this feel like normal behaviour for a pilot? From my limited experience of pilots, this seems entirely unlike the kind of behaviour you'd expect - they're usually conservative when it comes to safety or is that just the projected image to reassure the public?!

Not a pilot but familiar with the aviation world and procedures.

Obviously the plane had issues getting off the ground. Probably because it was too heavy. Typically, pilots calculate a speed beyond which they can no longer safely abort the takeoff. Beyond that speed, the plane is basically going to fly or shoot off the runway and crash. That point is decided based on weight, wind, runway length, etc. It's entirely possible mistakes were made with that or with loading the plane. Maybe there was some wind shear as well, which could explain a sudden drop or unexpected challenges getting off the ground.

Usually the co-pilot's job is to call these speeds out and if either of them calls to abort, there is supposed to be no discussion or debate on this and pilots are trained to act right away because every second counts. Obviously that did not happen

So, the pilots were not aware of issues before the abort speed (or they should have aborted) and committed to getting off the ground. I'm sure the in cockpit recordings will be part of the investigation. They sort of succeeded in the sense that they hit some objects but ultimately did not crash and got off the ground. Their climb rate must have been terrible. Usually the gear comes up as soon as you have a positive rate of climb (reduces drag). I imagine they called gear up seconds after leaving the ground before they hit anything even and the gear was likely transitioning.

Wind shear could have caused enough change in airspeed to cause the plane to not climb or even descend a bit. A heavy plane would have used up most of the runway in any case.

They then proceeded with what looks like normal procedure to get to altitude. Presumably they would have almost climbed out and changed frequencies from tower to local traffic controllers after 20-30 seconds or so. Recordings of that are going to be interesting. Presumably the damage to the ILS equipment would not have been noticed right away on the ground and people would have needed some time to figure out what the hell happened and what caused it and what plane hit it. Likewise the damage to the wall would not have been reported right away. By then the plane would have transitioned out of their area.

The question is whether the pilots noticed that they hit any objects and what the communication was with these controllers on this. The plane would have been pitched up (restricts visibility to the ground in front of you) and the damage occurred pretty far behind the pilots. So they may not have seen the obstacles immediately in front of them or heard/felt hitting them. These planes are big and heavy and there's lots of noise and vibrations when a plane takes off.

The damage looks dramatic but you wouldn't be able to see it until after the landing. Obviously the plane was flying and climbing and cruising normally. And they also landed safely. So flight operations seem to not have been directly affected. So, I can see them concluding that they had a stressful takeoff but had gotten in the air successfully. Then some time later they got the news that they hit some obstacles and that there is probably damage to the plane.

The big question is why that took 3 hours. I imagine it involved a lot of communication on the ground.

Re: Air India Express 737 Hits ILS, Damages Wall on Departure, Flies for 4 Hours

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately don’t have time for a long post at the moment, but as an airline pilot and instructor/check pilot, I can say that extreme incompetence exists in the airline world, especially in Africa, India, SE Asia. There could be some very good reasons that they chose to continue, and often I learn those reasons when the facts are released, discovering that a good decision was made. I’ll be following the investigati…

The accidents rates by country paints a completely different picture. [1] This wikipedia list of glaring pilot incompetence leading to fatalities doesn't seem to show any bias for specific regions. [2] When using anecdotal data one just can't make sweeping judgements and conclusions data does not support, that takes discussion into the region of prejudice and bigotry. This anecdotal one person usually 'an insider' fi…

That first link is pretty inapplicable - the numbers it shows are total fatalities and total accidents since 1945, not scaled for population of the country, not scaled for the quantity of air travel (in a time range where, especially early on where air travel was least safe, there were vast regional differences in wealth and frequency of flying), and over a long enough period that it doesn't really reflect the current reality.

Your second link is exactly the same kind of anecdotal BS you're complaining about - a list compiled by English-speaking editors on a Western-centric website of pilot errors they've personally heard about.

Discussion with actual numbers is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18206505

Re: Air India Express 737 Hits ILS, Damages Wall on Departure, Flies for 4 Hours

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In contrast, I can't say I've ever heard of seats in cars having this problem. Is it because plane seats are highly optimised for weight?

My wife knows of two fatal car accidents caused by this. Don't adjust your seat whilst driving peeps, and make sure it clicked into position before you drive if you adjust it.

Inability to apply enough force to the brake pedal at the right moment.

Re: Air India Express 737 Hits ILS, Damages Wall on Departure, Flies for 4 Hours

#197
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going to 36000 feet was taking a massive risk. I don’t think we have enough information yet to establish whether excessive weight was a factor.

On the other hand being higher buys you more time to correct for problems when they occur.

It buys you more time when the engines fail and you turn into a glider. If structural failure occurs, it just takes you longer to fall to the ground.

Re: Air India Express 737 Hits ILS, Damages Wall on Departure, Flies for 4 Hours

#198
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some facts: Hull loss rates by region of operator per million departures (Jet / Turboprop) 2012-2016: [0] - 2.21 / 7.38 Africa - 1.17 / 20.59 CIS - 0.74 / 3.42 Middle East / North Africa - 0.53 / 1.55 Latin America / Caribbean - 0.48 / 1.45 Asia Pacific - 0.22 / 0.98 North America - 0.14 / 0.73 Europe - 0.00 / 8.73 North Asia India falls below Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan in air safety audit [1] >The audit — ICAO Univers…

This is highly misleading and deceptive. You are mixing up the headline and data from link 2 which is mainly focused on which government agency licenses ATCs as the reason for lower scores, to the IATA hull loss data from link 1 which does not single out any country or region for below 'minimum safety target rates'. This is the IATA data for hull loss rates for 2017 per million departures: Asia Pacific - 0.18 CIS - 0…

For uncommon events like aircraft hull losses, I very much prefer the larger sample size of a few years, even if it does put the data slightly out of date. Though note - the IATA there notes that 2017 indicates a recent (last-few-years) trend of increased safety in sub-Saharan Africa.

GP poster was quite clear that the two pieces of data were from different sources, and the five-year data shows clear trends (though with

Re: Air India Express 737 Hits ILS, Damages Wall on Departure, Flies for 4 Hours

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What caused them to retun in half way? Report says Trichy airport informed pilot about posssible damage to plane. Pilot ignored it saying everything is green. What happened in 4hrs to divert back to Mumbai is still mystery. Will be interesting to see full report

If they went to burn the fuel, going somewhere and returning is easier than circling for 4 hours.

You would prefer to stay near an airport, rather than far away over the sea.

Re: Air India Express 737 Hits ILS, Damages Wall on Departure, Flies for 4 Hours

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What caused them to retun in half way? Report says Trichy airport informed pilot about posssible damage to plane. Pilot ignored it saying everything is green. What happened in 4hrs to divert back to Mumbai is still mystery. Will be interesting to see full report

If they went to burn the fuel, going somewhere and returning is easier than circling for 4 hours.

No.

1. You would not want to ascend to flight level 360 (particularly with a damaged plane).

2. You would not want to leave the vicinity of an airport (particularly with a damaged plane).

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