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.

Proper takeoff power is checked very early in the takeoff roll. After that you have all the way to V1 to ascertain that both engines are producing takeoff power.

Once the plane gets airborne, there can be system changes with ‘weight-off-wheels’. There have been some theories to such failures, with WOW.

There was a statement today from the Air India CEO about the accident. It didn’t really say much, just some of what they were looking into.

My skepticism about it being related to WOW is that each of the 3 landing gear would have 2 sensors on it. Many systems are configured with System A on a different electrical bus than System B, with A and B being the redundant sensors or processors. Though idk how it is set up on the 787, I would be shocked if there is only one sensor per gear and doubly shocked if all 3 gear falsely indicated they were on the ground. And then I question whether the FADECs would command idle thrust, because that would require that autoland have been armed.

Way too many separate things would have to all go wrong for that scenario. One failure is possible but should be a non-issue. Two failures would be exceedingly unlikely. Multiple WOW sensors, autoland erroneously armed? Thrust levers pushed forward by the pilots (a logical action if they rolled back) being ignored by FADEC? None of this makes sense.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig People in the investigation must know by now pretty much what happened.

Maybe it has moved onto the political level - AI is THE national carrier, after all.

Hoover with another *possible* theory. Single engine failure immediately after take-off, and one of the pilots inadvertently shuts down the wrong engine (which has happened before). No way to save the plane at that point, so early in the climb.

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:
Hoover with another *possible* theory. Single engine failure immediately after take-off, and one of the pilots inadvertently shuts down the wrong engine (which has happened before). No way to save the plane at that point, so early in the climb.

[FLASH_VIDEO]<iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dIgnR0zw3FU?si=RgW4eN541eqnSNH_&start=992" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>[/FLASH_VIDEO]

This cost us a UH 60 over the Med in the early '90s. One engine died, and the pilots pulled back the wrong throttle at wave top altitude. End of story.

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
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.

Assuming it is legit, what are the odds the FAA bans Air India from flying into the US?

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:
Hoover with another *possible* theory. Single engine failure immediately after take-off, and one of the pilots inadvertently shuts down the wrong engine (which has happened before). No way to save the plane at that point, so early in the climb.

While theoretically possible, to me it is very unlikely.

In modern jets the response to an engine failure is, "Continue". Do nothing to at least 1500 ft above the ground. Even in case of engine fire, which there is no evidence of in the videos of this crash. The airplane flies fine except a lesser climb rate, and is guaranteed to get above all relevant obstacles.

Once safely cleaned up above 1500 feet, meaning gear up, flaps up, airspeed per the profile, establish a safe path which is usually the departure procedure but might be a turn to a specific heading. Only then does the flying pilot call for an emergency checklist. For the first several minutes after an engine failure during takeoff it is a calm, quiet cockpit.

The modern philosophy with jets is that an engine failure isn't really more than an abnormal operation. Unlike a cabin fire, for example.

The procedure to shut down the failed engine is orderly, starting with identifying which engine based on messages on the screen. There will be a bunch of red messages with either R or L for things like generators, fuel pressure, hydraulic pressure, etc. Then the procedure calls for pulling back the corresponding thrust lever to verify it is the correct engine. After that, move the selector to Shutoff.

All of those are done with verbal confirmation. e.g for a suspected left engine failure: PNF (pilot not flying), "Procedure says pull Left Thrust Lever to flight idle." Puts his hand on the left thrust lever. "Confirm LEFT thrust lever". PF (pilot flying), looks at the thrust levers and mentally verifies it is the left one. "Confirmed". PNF says "Flight Idle" and pulls it back.

This is very deliberate with both pilots verifying every step. It doesn't even begin until well beyond where this accident aircraft was obviously in trouble.

While possible that one of the pilots shut down the wrong engine after the other failed, there is no visual evidence of an engine failure (aircraft yaw, engine smoke, etc) and it would be grossly against all the training and procedures to be messing with any engine controls at that point in the climb.

Actually, I just saw this video which I find more compelling. It may have been assumed that loss of electrical power would not shut down the engines. But maybe there is a way...

A cascading electrical system failure (which apparently has happened before with the 787) would cause a power loss to the FSOVs. The Fuel Shut Off Valves are designed to cut fuel to the engines in the event of engine fire. Spring-loaded, they activate automatically in the event of power loss (Boeing's reasoning being that a power loss would disable the pilot's ability to manually shut down burning engines, i.e. a fail-safe contingency).

The RAT deploying is indicative of a catastrophic electical power loss. The instantaneous activation of the FSOVs may have occurred in the brief transition period before the RAT could spool up to full power.