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

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

#81
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's in the linked Twitter thread. It was a brick wall. https://twitter.com/shukla_tarun/status/1050581391828836352

Well a single layer, unreinforced brick wall isn't really that strong, especially near the top edge. It's perhaps plausible they didn't feel anything or at least nothing very alarming. I mean, the gear presumably still retracted properly and deployed later for landing, so it wasn't damaged too badly.

The other photo posted here shows that it was a rather thin brick wall too:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18205837

I guess the majority of the damage was done by the large steel antennae it hit before the wall.

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

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cargo is definitely pressurized. Not heated/aced, but pressurezed the same as the rest of the cabin. Everying from the skin inwards is under 5000ish feet of pressure.

It's heated above freezing too as far as I know, I've never had anything in my luggage freeze.

Heated in that the air becomes warmer as it is compressed. But not the additionally-heated air provided the main cabin. Even so, at low air density even -30 would take a while to cool the large mass of bags.

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

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After V1, the accelerate-stop distance, the pilot is committed to continue flying. The cargo area of most airliners is not pressurized, so the gash is not an immediate problem. In a case like this, the pilots would want to climb to several thousand feet and evaluate the situation before landing. Looks like the pilot did a great job once it was realized the airplane was damaged of remaining calm and flying the airplan…

Cargo is definitely pressurized. Not heated/aced, but pressurezed the same as the rest of the cabin. Everying from the skin inwards is under 5000ish feet of pressure.

The front cargo hold is heated with engine bleed air.

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

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, there have been Cessna deaths caused the same way. It's my least favorite failure mode to think about, since there's no obvious way to correct. In a Cessna, best you can do is release the yoke and tiptoe on to the rudders, but professional instructors have still died when this happens to them, since low altitude errors are often not correctable by the time you've lost too much altitude. Usually there ought to be…

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?

Could be because people don't generally drive 40 year old cars! The aircraft in the first fatal link above was manufactured in 1979 and the seat failed in 2016; the second was manufactured in 1969 and crashed in 2014.

And because it would be less likely fatal in the car, so you'd be less likely to hear of it happening.

(Less likely fatal because car collisions are less fatal due to e.g. airbags, and less likely to impact terrain since it only takes a second to undo your car seatbelt, and because there's no pitch control to have messed up.)

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

#86
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 737 (subject of this article) cannot.

Huh. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/9393/why-doesnt... The rules are based on the fact that landing is harder on the airframe than taking off, so as long as max takeoff weight is only a fraction higher than max landing weight you get a pass. And at any rate you get the greater of 10 minutes or 1% of max takeoff weight per minute to dump enough fuel to land safely. I wonder how long it takes a 737 to cir…

20 percent of fuel is used from take off to cruise altitude. On a plane like a 777, that still leaves a very substantial amount of fuel onboard. However on a smaller plane like a 737, you don't have to circle for too long before you're below MLW.

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

#87

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?!

I used to work as a flight instructor and flew corporate. I’ve flown small airplanes with a bunch of airline pilots, whatever that is worth. This does not seem like normal behavior from an airline pilot at all. I can see about 10% of private pilots doing something like this. It would probably be someone who has been flying a long time and gotten way too comfortable. Things always work out, so why not this time? The d…

[deleted]

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

#88

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?!

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…

My, what a broad brush you have. With of course no ‘time’ to back it up with facts.

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

#90
post #21
post #6

Impressive resilience by the airframe. Good job Boeing.

Yes, I'd say this incident makes for a good Boeing ad - "Even a brick wall can't stop a 737 from flying a route!"

That seems mildly irresponsible. "Eh, I don't need to pull up, it's a Boeing."
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