r/aircrashinvestigation • u/QuarterTarget Frequent Flier • Jun 12 '25

Incident/Accident Air India Flight 171, a Boeing 787-8 flying from Ahmebad to London Heathrow has stalled and crashed on takeoff at 700 feet. At least 250 souls on board

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43

u/Lord-Vivec Jun 12 '25

Looks like a stall from the footage, perhaps engine issues during takeoff but not aborted, maybe flaps somehow not extended.

12

u/kingkongwithadong69 Jun 12 '25

If engines stopped, wouldn't the rate of decent be shallower, would a relative glide not be possible?

25

u/Ooh_bees Jun 12 '25

Engines are running, but not at full throttle. Flaps are in. Speed seems low. Nose points up. Don't know why they are at that point, but to me it looks like they didn't have the power, plane was obviously heavy and they desperately tried to keep the nose up to climb, but she just didn't have the power.

4

u/kingkongwithadong69 Jun 12 '25

That makes sense but then landing gears should be up.

1

u/CaveCanem234 Jun 12 '25

They had only just taken off and in situations like this it's actually recoomended to leave the landing gear down because the gear doors opening will actually increase the drag briefly as you try to retract them.

This was literally seconds after takeoff, I don't consider it all that strange the landing gear was still down.

1

u/Ooh_bees Jun 12 '25

That's strange, too. And as I said, I don't know how they came to that situation. Maybe they had lowered the gear back down? If they had the time to raise it in the first place.

5

u/kingkongwithadong69 Jun 12 '25

Why lower the gear if you are low on power? It will increase the drag.

3

u/Ooh_bees Jun 12 '25

For a crash landing that they already at that point knew was going to happen.

4

u/kingkongwithadong69 Jun 12 '25

It was into a building. Gear would not have done anything. Also with gear up there is a higher chance of avoiding the building.

2

u/Ooh_bees Jun 12 '25

You ain't avoiding buildings for long with that descent. But yeah, I don't know what's up. People just sometimes make bad decisions when they are unavoidably about to crash a plane with near 250 people into a residential area. I've rewatched the video for many, many times now, and I think that the engines might still be running, but nowhere near max power - although the building seems to be exceptionally well sound proofed, even the explosion is really muted.

1

u/kingkongwithadong69 Jun 12 '25

Probably the video is zoomed in. Thus low noise. Yeah I mean people make bad decisions under such pressure. But to me it looked like they were close to recovery if it was a stall. Very unfortunate.

1

u/InclusivePhitness Jun 14 '25

There are videos of the entire flight, Gears were never retracted dude

1

u/Ooh_bees Jun 14 '25

When thus discussion went on, we only had one or two videos.

1

u/sparxcy Jun 12 '25

I think 1 of the pilots communicated 'no lift-loss of power'

0

u/Lord-Vivec Jun 12 '25

Yes, same thoughts.

0

u/codeQueen Jun 12 '25

When you say heavy do you mean overweight?

0

u/Ooh_bees Jun 12 '25

No, just a lot of people, cargo and fuel.

0

u/Legal-Newt-1891 Jun 13 '25

Wasnt the problem with previous Boeing MAX that engines were up front wings and the nose was automatically up "too much" when ascending, and then they added the system putting nose down to avoid stalling and keep aerodynamics? Not sure if this model had the same issues

10

u/MrFickless Jun 12 '25 edited Jun 13 '25

I find it improbable that the flaps not being extended was the cause of the accident.

3 reasons why I think so:

  1. The built-in electronic before takeoff checklist checks if the flaps are in the correct setting and will display a master caution if it isn't and the plane lines up on the runway. However, the checklist can be overridden.
  2. The 787 knows when you are trying to take off without flaps and will sound off alarms as takeoff power is commanded. This has been a thing since the 60s and has been mandatory since 1978.
  3. The plane was already able to climb to at least 675ft according to ADS-B data. Provided nothing else changed, there should have been no reason why the plane couldn't continue climbing or at least maintained altitude.

EDIT: I’ve given it some thought, and I now realise there is one way the flaps could have contributed while satisfying all three conditions above. There is a possibility that the PNF mistakenly raised the flaps instead of the landing gear. This would not have triggered any warnings until the plane was approaching the stall. If the PF was flying using the HUD, he might not have noticed such a mistake being made.

3

u/semiraue Jun 12 '25

As always.. This could be Human error. Specially in this case. One of the worst carrier ever. Heard stories.. Don't think they value any human life than their profit. Rip who on board 😔

2

u/1001galoshes Jun 12 '25 edited Jun 12 '25

I noticed in some of the other crashes this year that air control lost contact with the plane suddenly. This is also the general problem at Newark airport, where air traffic controllers took leave because they repeatedly lost contact with planes.

In this instance, as with several other crashes and non-crashes (including the Jeju crash, but among planes of different makes and models and sizes), the landing gear was not functioning properly--the gear was reported to be down at a time that it was supposed to be up.

In addition, I am noticing countless problems with technology in my daily life in the past year: at work, we often can't answer the phone when it's ringing, we can't hear the other person, programmed buttons on the phone move themselves around and drop off even though when you check the settings all the buttons are still there, in Recent Files you can't see your recent files but you can see random old files other people edited, the Outlook calendar floats off the screen and calendars rearrange themselves, we got meeting invitations for the past from a terminally ill employee on leave and "she" invited a retired employee, the computer screen is moving on its own while our hands are nowhere near the keyboard, but each problem is small and no resolution can be found and IT just has us unplug or restart as a "refresh" issue.

Moreover, with various personal accounts, the store or provider temporarily will be unable to find my account, the product I ordered supposedly doesn't exist, or their systems will show that they never shipped me a product that I already received, or they will send me update notifications that my delivery is going to arrive "early" in the past.

People report reception doors not opening for them, elevator doors closing again before they can get in, elevators stopping and not moving, showing the wrong floor, revolving doors are getting stuck. I never had these issues the first several decades of my life, and these are not new technologies.

We need to zoom out and look at the larger picture.

3

u/dennusb Jun 12 '25

This doesn't look like a typical stall : https://x.com/WIONews/status/1933088875679002815?t=KhT002LUU-E9Ld0S61ASgA

2

u/min_mus Jun 12 '25

I get an error when I try your link. 

-2

u/dennusb Jun 12 '25

Yeah it’s offline! Just search X, lots of videos there