Air India 787 crashes on take off 13

[LittleInch]

A full 787-8 has crashed shortly after take off in ahmedabad.

Basically barely got off the ground then look like its trying to land in this video.

Air India ordered to carry out ‘additional maintenance actions’ on Boeing 787-8/9 fleet – as it happened

India’s ministry of civil aviation orders airline to carry out safety inspections on fleet with GE Aerospace GEnx engines after crash of flight 171

www.theguardian.com

Specualtion that they pulled flaps up instead of gear up and basically didn't have enough lift so it looks like a gentle stall right into a built up area.

Looks to be flaps up, slats/ nose flaps down and gear down which is very odd.

 

[IRstuff]

Lots of people trying to deflect attention from intentional pilot action. Jeff Ostroff attributes this to a national pride thing in India, but this guy doesn't appear to be doing that, exactly.

What this "expert" says is inconsistent with what's in the preliminary report's voice recording. Specifically, one pilot asks the other why they did a cutoff; if it had been an electrical failure, the pilot response would have been, "WTF, we lost power, try restarting fuel" since the fuel cutoff would have occurred with the fuel switches in the ON position.

And, the data recorder shows switches moved to the OFF position prior to loss of fuel, which would not be the case if some control chip crapped out, since the switches would still have been in the ON positions. This is coupled with data recording of the switches going to the ON position 10 seconds later; a chip failure would show switches in ON position through the loss of fuel, followed by a quick OFF, the ON again as the pilots attempted to restart the engines.

 

[TugboatEng]

IRStuff, it is possible the switch failed to transmit the signal correctly. I recently inherited some equipment that uses a relay to interlock a 0-10V process signal. Because of the low current the relay would randomly fail to transmit the signal correctly. I was able to resolve the issue by converting the signal to a current signal prior to the relay contacts. With digital controls, mechanical switches provide poor closing reliability. I think this is an issue that many engineers may not be aware of and needs to be emphasized for attention.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

There must also be redundant FADEC controllers on each engine?

There are 3 channels on mine 2 primary which swap every engine start and an emergency backup. The engines can also cross talk so even if one engine has lost all 3 the other takes over. One channel can look after both engines solo i believe.

There will be something in that mel for redundancy downgrades of fadec.

 

[LittleInch]

Lots of people trying to deflect attention from intentional pilot action. Jeff Ostroff attributes this to a national pride thing in India, but this guy doesn't appear to be doing that, exactly.

What this "expert" says is inconsistent with what's in the preliminary report's voice recording. Specifically, one pilot asks the other why they did a cutoff; if it had been an electrical failure, the pilot response would have been, "WTF, we lost power, try restarting fuel" since the fuel cutoff would have occurred with the fuel switches in the ON position.

And, the data recorder shows switches moved to the OFF position prior to loss of fuel, which would not be the case if some control chip crapped out, since the switches would still have been in the ON positions. This is coupled with data recording of the switches going to the ON position 10 seconds later; a chip failure would show switches in ON position through the loss of fuel, followed by a quick OFF, the ON again as the pilots attempted to restart the engines.

I agree with you.

The interim report threw a couple of red herrings into the mix, specifically the issue of whether the cut off switches locking mechanism "might" have been inoperative, but in all these software / electric circuitry potential causes, the possibility of TWO failing within one second of each other and as you say, the response of one of the pilots being "why did you cut off the fuel supply?", not "why have we lost fuel supply?" is very telling assuming that these are true quotes. There is also a leak that the pilot asking this did so two or three times before - maybe - taking his hand off the control column and switching them back on himself. No wonder it took 10 seconds.

 

[IRstuff]

attributes the initial query as to why the other pilot cut off the fuel to the copilot, and the denial to the senior pilot. There is also the claim that the senior pilot had had issues with divorce, etc.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

There are some rather large percentages being given. I don't depute them.

The lifestyle that is imposed on you and your family is hard on everyone.

Of the 4 pilots i know that went to train driving during covid none of them came back due to the life quality.

I have noticed a big difference between turboprop and jetpilot life. I am temped to go back to turboprop with the cut in pay.

 

[Garbage1]

There are some rather large percentages being given. I don't depute them.

The lifestyle that is imposed on you and your family is hard on everyone.

Of the 4 pilots i know that went to train driving during covid none of them came back due to the life quality.

I have noticed a big difference between turboprop and jetpilot life. I am temped to go back to turboprop with the cut in pay.

Work in general causes lifestyle impacts, and different professions have different impacts.

Some engineering and jobs require constant travel.

Manufacturing in a another country from design, requires travel and tours of duty in foreign countries.

In construction the Superintentent travels from job to job, and leaves the family behind at a home base. And on very large projects the engineering and project mgt team move to the project.

Oil rig workers has on and off periods.

Long haul truckers.

Then don't forget the lifestyle impacts of being in the military, relocating every 6 months to 3 years.

Then there are professions that seem to have regular 9-5 hours, and always sleep in same bed every night.

Globalization has increased travel and forced lifestyle changes. No longer are a lot of consumer products produced near the actual consumer.

Is the difference between jetpilot and turbo prop pilots, how many nights u spend away from home base?

In todays world, I would much rather be PF and PIC, than just cattle (passenger).

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

I come from Aberdeen and grew up with the offshore life although my parents were in education.

Nights at home although you can get that with eazyjet or ryanair. But then the type of pax is different.

its mainly the ground operations and atc slots which are way more fatiguing with the destinations jets go to.

Turboprops the weather is more of an issue down at below fl250.

And you not joking about being PIC when you need to get somewhere.

 

[Tomfh]

I haven't been following this for a while. Was the earlier talk of supposed electrical problems a red herring? Is that normal that the RAT would deploy in the event of dual engine failure during takeoff?

 

[Garbage1]

Yes it was normal for RAT to deploy with dual engine failure, although RAT was never designed to deal with pilot shutting off fuel to both engines, approximately 3 seconds after lift off.

Electrical problem ended up being the human in loop.

 

[LittleInch]

I haven't been following this for a while. Was the earlier talk of supposed electrical problems a red herring? Is that normal that the RAT would deploy in the event of dual engine failure during takeoff?

There was a lot of conjecture about cause and effect, but once the report came out which said the fuel cut off switches were moved one after the other, followed by cockpit talk about why did you turn the fuel supply off, then 10 seconds later they were returned to Run mode.

When the engines lost power the generators died pretty fast and the RAT was seen out before the plane left the airfield boundary.

Seems three seconds after lift off is the ideal time if you want to crash.

 

[TugboatEng]

Personally, I'd want to be going a bit faster if I were to want to off myself.

I do feel the just after take-off timing is odd.

 

[IRstuff]

Personally, I'd want to be going a bit faster if I were to want to off myself.

I do feel the just after take-off timing is odd

There's already been an explanation for that. Any higher speed would have been associated with higher altitude, giving more time for the engines to recover operation before crashing. The timing of the shutoff was impeccable; another 10 seconds might have resulted in the first engine restarted to generate enough thrust to pull out of the dive, since the preliminary report indicated that it was still spinning up after the restart when the plane crashed.

 

[SnTMan]

You kinda wonder if it weren't practiced in a sim...

 

[IRstuff]

You kinda wonder if it weren't practiced in a sim...

Since it's likely that it was intentional, then sure; the Malaysian airliner incident's pilot supposedly flew multiple simulations of his last flight