What a disaster. I’m surprised this wasn’t posted already. A big Boeing 787 crashes shortly after takeoff at Patel International Airport at 1:38 p.m. local time in India.
This type has had an excellent record up until this point. Of the 242 souls on boards, 241 were lost. One passenger walked away. Ganesha loves this man!!
I’m only starting this for speculation. What do you think happened? I know a little stuff about aviation, but am mostly ignorant. I know the basics. I’m hoping someone here might know more.
He didn’t even stumble out. The plane exploded into a huge fireball. What happened was the tail struck first, an opening appeared to his left. He jumped out right before the plane exploded.
He walked away with a limp and some superficial injuries. He probably jumped to safety a mere second before death.
We will know once the black box is found and fully decoded.
Chances are it probably is pilot error. But that said, it was a Boeing aircraft and considering their reputation the past few years… it’s not a good look.
Another pilot speculated that the co-pilot accidently hit the flaps instead of the gear up. I have no idea how possible the mixup actually is to agree or disagree with that theory.
That theory is out there based on the video. Shortly after takeoff the copilot says positive rate. Captain says gear up. The gear never came up in the video. That’s what leads people to believe he hit flaps instead. That would cause the plane to lose lift and come back down.
If the captain didn’t catch it, he would probably not know why the plane was losing lift. They only got to just over 600 feet. Not a lot of time to recover. Another possibility is a loss of power in both engines. Both seem very unlikely. But obviously something happened.
Probably not. From what I have heard on NPR, they experienced a problem well down the runway, too late to abort the take off. He probably had to lift off before achieving sufficient speed and therefore, could not gain enough altitude to clear the six-story building that sat very close to the end of the runway.
Not likely. The landing gear lever is on the front panel between the pilot/co-pilot positions and moves up and down, while the flap actuator is on the console between the seats next to the throttle levers and moved forward and backwards. They are virtually impossible to confuse.
The speculation was that flaps were removed altogether. That would cause the plane to lose lift.
Some are also saying RAT was deployed. That would indicate a loss of power. So if they had a serious problem after V1, which is the last chance to abort takeoff, they’d have a serious problem. You might be right on this one.
The NPR report I listened to said that this airport has serious airspace violations. That six-story building was almost on the centerline within a relatively close distance from the fence.
And the last words from the cockpit were “Thrust not achieved… falling… Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!”
I think they had an engine problem well into the take-off roll and ran out of runway. The pilots choice would have been to crash through the threshold or try to get it into the air. With insufficient airspeed they would be unable to gain altitude, but his instinct would be to pull up to avoid obstacles. The tail breaking off and remaining somewhat intact would indicate a very nose high angle as it struck the building.
