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)"?
Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard
51–60 of 633 posts
Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard
#52Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard
#53Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard
#54Earlier 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.
Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard
#55[flagged]
Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard
#56Baffling 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)"?
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
#57Earlier 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.
Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard
#58Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard
#59Gentle 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.
Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard
#60Earlier 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.