quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
Any chance they raised the flaps instead of the gear? That would account for the loss of lift at slow speed and the mushing just before the crash

Yes, but it wouldn’t explain the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) deploying. Second post on this page has video of nothing working in the cabin.

Did they depart with an airplane that had known issues?

It is also possible that the Pilot Not Flying selected gear up, but there was no hydraulic power (or not enough) to raise the gear.

Many things are possible, but lest one end up looking like Captain Steve and having to walk back their guesses, it might be best to wait for the investigation.

With slightly less than 2000 hours of turbine and jet time, I am looking forward to the tail of the black boxes. Flap position, gear down, too much speculation for me. It is readily apparent it was extremely lacking in thrust. Hopefully we can keep this from ever happening again.

I like to think about ‘assumptions’ and to point out a few checks along the way. It seems the problems manifested shortly after taking off, just a few 100 feet. Were things ‘normal’ before that? If so, it sure went sideways quickly.

Yeah the RAT, at 1st I wasn’t convinced the ram air turbine was out, now it seems consensus is it was out.

I would like to ‘assume’ correct takeoff data was set prior to takeoff. That is thrust proper for weight, flaps set properly. This is all double checked by each crew member.

Early in the takeoff roll, engine thrust is checked, both engines. There’s plenty of time before V1 to reject if engine power doesn’t match expected numbers. Both engines are monitored all the way to V1, plus the aircraft itself monitors engine thrust. So now we got to V1, all still normal, normally.

After V1, rotation comes soon, long runway. With rotation they are soon in the air, relatively short period, now problems manifested. There’s no procedure at this point where a pilot will reach up and manually deploy the RAT. If the RAT was out, only a handful of very serious issues that would cause it to auto deploy. It seems like an awful lot to go wrong in this short time.

There have been mentions of weak maintenance, always the possibility of crew error. I don’t even like to think about the idea of intentional actions.

With a high profile accident like this I’d kinda think info will bleed out once the data recorders are scrutinized.

A buddy of mine sent what appeared to be an initial “official” first look into the actual data. According to this information which does seem to be supported by the actual events the cause was a full scale cascading complete electrical failure upon rotation. The FADEC’s which control the engine thrust settings and is 100% electronic with no manual backup reverted to ground idle upon liftoff. The report further stated that this system had been written up many times but continually deferred which means no fixes were made. The last deferral apparently noted “thermal damage” to the transfer relay which is beyond concerning. Think evidence of arcing in your fuse box and then shrugging your shoulders. All of this is contingent on my intel being correct.

That would be a mind numbing level of negligence if accurate.

Third tier foreign carriers have a long history of ridiculously poor maintenance practices. That part is not surprising. Air India would be shut down if it were an American carrier. As would Lion Air and Air Ethiopia. Maintenance is expensive in aviation. Unless you don’t do it.

What I was told could be pure fabrication. It looked and felt pretty legit though.

First a disclaimer of sorts - modern systems ground school is of the "Green light good, Red light bad" philosophy. Unlike 20+ years ago when we had to know every relay, actuator, fuel and hydraulic valve so that we could build the airplane from a pile of parts. (Slight exaggeration but not much).

Iirc, the FADEC has its own small generator such that if the engine is turning the FADEC will be powered. There was a passing comment to that effect in systems class for one of the jets I flew.

If the reports of major electrical problems on the previous inbound flight are accurate, it suggests a cascading electrical problem compounded by bad human decisions.

It is entirely possible local maintenance came out and did a ctrl-alt-delete system reboot (full power shutdown for a few minutes, then power it back up) and the an "Ops Check OK" sign off of the maintenance log.

It is curious to me that the FDR and CVR have not been at least summarized publicly. It is very quick to download the data. People in the investigation must know by now pretty much what happened.

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:

Third tier foreign carriers have a long history of ridiculously poor maintenance practices.

That was my first thought when this all happened. India is incredibly "dodgy" as the Brits would say when it comes to maintaining ANYTHING. Doesn't matter if the pilot had 10 million hours, if the plane is a piece of shit it's not going to fly.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse...al%20flight%20phases.

Interesting date on this article. I’m not saying it means anything.

Everything to me looks like the plane got configured for auto-land.
And it tried to land. Like the new Airbus that plowed into trees full of presscorps.

I think it was a fuel contamination issue. Everything was good until it needed full power.