London bound Air India 787 Dreamliner crashes at Ahmedabad

Difficult to speculate at such an early juncture but the aircraft has lost lift, thrust and is slowly decending in level flight. Maybe takeoff configeration, flaps etc or fuel starvation, be interesting to see what hypothese our forum pilots have on the matter. The 787 is a beautiful aircraft and one that we have flown on many times. RIP to all onboard.
 
youngbob said:
I don't know much about planes myself, but a few people who seem to are speculating that there was just too much weight on board? A few pointing to the massive amount of fuel in the tank?
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I can’t see the flaps being deployed, just before impact pilot has gone nose up but lacks the speed to correct?

RIP to all involved, absolutely horrible.
 
Just watching now on Sky news, hope I’m wrong but it doesn’t look like there’s any survivors, terrible terrible news.
 
youngbob said:
I don't know much about planes myself, but a few people who seem to are speculating that there was just too much weight on board? A few pointing to the massive amount of fuel in the tank?
Click to expand...

Nor do I. But that seems unlikely as you'd think that would be an easy one to pick up on a pre flight check.

I assume the main amount of weight would be made up of the following:

1. Passenger weight (Just a rough average weight)
2. Checked baggage weight
3. Fuel weight.

Presuming 1 and 2 are normally quite similar for most flights you'd think that fuel would be the other big weight changer. And I'm pretty sure you can see fuel levels in the cockpit so it's an easy one to check.
 
Its been suggested that it didn't use the required amount of runway to get upto takeoff speed as seen on flight radar.
 
Cheesy said:
Gear defintely still down and flaps do not look like they are extended. This would point to pilot error.
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Pilot on Sky news now saying it’s easy to do, to have those things incorrectly set. Of course it could also be mechanical.
 
787 pilot here

Very, very sad to see. All sorts of theories floating around - many of them clearly total rubbish. Beware of talking heads on news channels presented as ‘experts’. Give such ‘experts’ as much caution as we give ‘experts’ talking about City. Hopefully they can recover the FDR (black box) and get some info out asap.
 
crooky said:
Nor do I. But that seems unlikely as you'd think that would be an easy one to pick up on a pre flight check.

I assume the main amount of weight would be made up of the following:

1. Passenger weight (Just a rough average weight)
2. Checked baggage weight
3. Fuel weight.

Presuming 1 and 2 are normally quite similar for most flights you'd think that fuel would be the other big weight changer. And I'm pretty sure you can see fuel levels in the cockpit so it's an easy one to check.
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Fuel is very predictable in the sense that it stays in the same place and you know how much you have because the aircraft sensors detect it.

That flight is medium range for a 787 so it shouldn't require fully fuelling. Less fuel means you can load more cargo (£££) so it's not usual practice to fully fuel. It's only done if there is less cargo and that flexibility allows for more fuel to save money for the return flight at the other end where fuel is more expensive at the destination airport.

The payload weight is inputted manually based upon the loadsheet and both the dispatcher and pilots have to legally sign for the aircraft for that reason. This might be different in India but either way if there was a discrepancy between the loadsheet, what the pilots inputted and what was actually loaded then somebody on the ground is in big trouble.

LangleyBlue1970 said:
Pilot on Sky news now saying it’s easy to do, to have those things incorrectly set. Of course it could also be mechanical.
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The aircraft alarms and shouts at you if you set something incorrectly and set takeoff power, it wouldn't be easy to ignore it. Computers also compare the flap handle position to the actual position of the flaps and a warning would pop up if the flaps were set to X and flaps didn't move as expected to that position by a certain time.

Usually with things like this there are multiple things that go wrong to add up to a crash. Pilot or human error on the ground will almost certainly feature somewhere unfortunately.
 
madloaf said:
Wouldn't there be numerous alerts if flaps were fully retracted on take off?
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An alert sounds as soon as they set takeoff power. Normal practice is to abort the takeoff so I don't think it was a flap issue unless they ignored all of the warnings but that still shouldn't cause a crash. The 787 has plenty of performance to escape that. Planes can land without flaps if they fail to extend although they land much faster than usual.

A theory I'm reading is that they took off, maybe retracted the flaps quite early but then had a double engine failure or at least intermittent engine issues. That would be the worst possible time for it to happen with the flaps no longer extended and there's already no altitude or speed to recover. Why they left the gear down though... Lot's of questions!

The engine sound heard in the videos may actually be the turbine under the fuselage which provides some power and hydraulics but you can't really see it. Apparently the flight data stopped quite early on FlightRadar24 which suggests electrical/engine power loss...
 
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youngbob said:
I don't know much about planes myself, but a few people who seem to are speculating that there was just too much weight on board? A few pointing to the massive amount of fuel in the tank?
Click to expand...
Neither do they!!

Very sad. I wonder if they went to retract the gear and retracted the flaps instead? i'm sure #Chicago will be on here soon to comment.
 
Awful news. Reports suggesting a mayday call was put in straight after take-off but then signal was lost. Crashing into a residential area means the death toll is likely to be much higher as well sadly.
 
I fucking hate flying but I like to travel, things like this are rare but I literally feel like shit the day before I fly with worry. I'm a mechanical engineer and I laugh when I get senior management telling me they want anything M&E related, designing with zero chance of failure.

Rest in peace to all onboard and any civilians on the ground.
 
SiMCFC said:
I fucking hate flying but I like to travel, things like this are rare but I literally feel like shit the day before I fly with worry. I'm a mechanical engineer and I laugh when I get senior management telling me they want anything M&E related, designing with zero chance of failure.

Rest in peace to all onboard and any civilians on the ground.
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Yeah I feel very much the same mate.
 
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