Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner just crushed in India right after take off. Again Boeing.

[Moses]

The Boeing 787-8 was heading to London with 242 people on board.

 

 

[Moses]

UPD: that Boeing crashed onto medical college. As per posts in twitters: "a lot of died students".

 

[PeterRS]

Deleted

[unicorn]

6 hours ago, Moses said:

UPD: that Boeing crashed onto medical college. As per posts in twitters: "a lot of died students".

[unicorn]

Not that I'm a fan of Boeing, but as far as I've heard, there's been no cause assigned to this accident as of this time. 

[Keithambrose]

19 minutes ago, unicorn said:

Not that I'm a fan of Boeing, but as far as I've heard, there's been no cause assigned to this accident as of this time. 

Suggestion currently that pilot retracted flaps too early. That was a cause of the  BA Trident crash at Staines in 1972. Amazingly, they have found a survivor,  it seems.

[unicorn]

23 minutes ago, Keithambrose said:

Suggestion currently that pilot retracted flaps too early. That was a cause of the  BA Trident crash at Staines in 1972. Amazingly, they have found a survivor,  it seems.

If that's the case, this suggestion would point more towards the hazards of flying with carriers of developing countries, rather than a Boeing problem itself, similar to crashes we hear of regarding Indonesian airlines, etc. Air India carries less than 10% of the number of travelers that American Airlines carries, yet has more than its fair share of incidents. I suspect that the rigor of vetting air pilots differs between the US and India, and that's probably largely responsible for the difference. 

[PeterRS]

At the moment everything is speculation and all we can do is grieve for the dead.

The Professional Pilots website pprune.org has a number of thoughts. One is that a full 787 with nearly 100 tons of fuel on board (the figure from Indian sources) took off without using the full length of the runway. The website Flight Radar shows it started its take off roll half way down the runway - far too short for such a heavy aircraft. Apparently this is qute comon at this airport, but only for quite lightly loaded aircraft. Normally heavy aircraft would back track to the end of the runway to give it sufficient time to gain the speed essential for take off. 

Another pilot suggests that the landing gear should not have been in the down position by that time since take off. He goes on to suggest that someone in the cockpit may have tretracted the flaps rather than the landing gear. But all we know is that the aircraft was not sufficiently high to continue flying. We therefore must await the outcome of the black box analysis.

[unicorn]

In either case, there doesn't seem to be any suspicion this had anything to do with the aircraft itself, and they said on the news that the 787 has never previously been involved with any crash. 

[a-447]

The problem of the weight of the aircraft was exacerbated by the high temperature of 40 degrees.

[khaolakguy]

4 hours ago, unicorn said:

In either case, there doesn't seem to be any suspicion this had anything to do with the aircraft itself, and they said on the news that the 787 has never previously been involved with any crash. 

Early to be saying this. There is also speculation about a massive power failure on board. Time will tell.

[tm_nyc]

7 hours ago, unicorn said:

they said on the news that the 787 has never previously been involved with any crash. 

The 787 has been in service for 14 years with no previous serious accidents.

Someone pointed out that the landing gear on the plane had not been retracted as it normally would have been which is another indication of a major systems failure.

[khaolakguy]

The survivor has said that 30 seconds before the crash there was a loud bang on board.................

[unicorn]

7 hours ago, khaolakguy said:

The survivor has said that 30 seconds before the crash there was a loud bang on board.................

From the New York Times:

“I still can’t believe how I got out alive,” Mr. Ramesh said on Friday in an interview from his hospital bed with India’s state broadcaster, Doordarshan. “I thought I was also about to die.”

Mr. Ramesh, who was seated in an exit row, said the plane had felt “stuck five or 10 seconds after takeoff,” and it seemed to be trying to accelerate when it crashed.

The front of the plane, after hitting buildings, crashed into an open area, he said, while the tail was stuck in a building, which was later identified as the dining facility of a medical college.

Mr. Ramesh said he unbuckled his seatbelt after the crash when he saw a chance for escape. He did not make clear whether he had to open the emergency exit he was sitting next to, or if the impact had caused it to open.

“When my door broke, I saw there was some space — that I could try to get out,” he said in the interview. “The other side, people couldn’t get out, as it was crushed against a wall.”

[unicorn]

13 hours ago, a-447 said:

The problem of the weight of the aircraft was exacerbated by the high temperature of 40 degrees.

It'll be interesting to find out the actual cause, when that's been determined...

[Moses]

Footage of Air India disaster shows ‘plane did lose power’, says expert

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/air-india-crash-plane-lost-power-investigation-steve-schreiber-b1233127.html

Mr Schreiber, best known as “Captain Steve” online, suspected there had been an exceptionally simple error when the co-pilot was asked to retract the landing gear with devastating consequences.

However, a higher quality version of the original crash video leads Mr Schreiber, 63, to believe a dual engine failure led to the plane’s demise.

Mr Schreiber, who has 26 years of flying experience - including 11 as a captain said on his YouTube channel that beneath the right wing, he could see a “protrusion on the belly of the aircraft”. Underneath, there is a “little grey dot” - evidence of the Ram Access Turbine deploying.

He claimed: “Many aeroplanes have it. It is just behind the wing on the right side of the aeroplane, there is a little door that holds it in. It looks like a little Evinrude motor, it’s a little two bladed prop. The purpose is to provide electrical and hydraulic pressure for the aircraft on an extreme emergency.”

Mr Schreiber said that on a 787 there are three things that will deploy the RAT automatically.

• A massive electrical failure,
• a massive hydraulic failure, or
• a dual engine failure.

“Any one of those three things will cause that RAT to deploy.”

The protrusion and the grey dot were visual evidence of the RAT deploying on the aircraft, Mr Schreiber alleged.

He added: “That little grey dot is the RAT. The protrusion is the door that opened to allow the RAT to come down.”

Summing up his analysis, Mr Schreiber concluded: “It is evidence for us it was dual engine failure, most likely. It could have been electrical issue, it could have been hydraulic issue, it could have been either one of that. But I think the fact the aeroplane is mushing out the sky gives the idea it was a dual engine failure.”

[Mavica]

 

[unicorn]

14 minutes ago, Mavica said:

https://youtu.be/8XYO-mj1ugg

Like other smart people, he was able to change his mind when new information became available, instead of sticking to his prior theory. Good for him. There are people on this message board who won't change their opinions regardless of any new information they receive. 😉

[PeterRS]

Second Air India Dreamliner Appears to Experience Technical Issues

An Air India Boeing 787 departed Hong Kong for Delhi at 12:20 pm yesterday. After reaching a height of 22,000 ft, the aircraft appeared to descend. The captain of AI315 suspected a technical issue. After informing HKATC that he suspected a problem and would like to remain close to Hong Kong, the captain soon informed HKATC "We don't want to continue further" and returned safely at 1:15 pm. The aircraft remained at Hong Kong for technical checks and passengers were routed on other flights.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/india/air-india-dreamliner-returns-hong-kong-technical-issue-rcna213205

[unicorn]

The mystery thickens. A plane with no history of problems, and now there are two reported problems in short order from the exact same airline, when 1200 have been built since 2007. That makes me suspect the airline's maintenance facilities...

 

[PeterRS]

We all seem to be forgetting that the Dreamliner, like the 737 Max, has had a troubed history. First it had to be grounded after it had entered service in 2011. On January 7  2013 a JAL 787 landed at Boston. As the aircraft was being prepared for its departure back to Japan, smoke was discovered in the cabin. Firemen disocvered a fire and a lot of smoke in the belly of the aircraft.

Just two days later faulty wiring was discovered in the same area on a United aircraft. Soon after, an ANA 787 on a domestic flight had to make an emergency landing at Takamatsu airport after burning was smelled in the aircraft. On January 17 the FAA ordered all 787s grounded. After inspections, faults were found in the lithium-ion batteries which were basically self-combusting. Solutions were found and after four months the aircraft was permitted to return to the air. Yet on July 12, an Ethiopian 787 on its stand on the ground at London's Heathrow suffered major fire damage, again a result of a battery fire.

At the end of 2014, the NTSB Report criticised the battery makers, Boeing and the FAA for lack of rigorous testing. It is extremely unlikely that the recent AI crash had anything to do with the earlier faults. But quality control issues have continued to dog this aircraft. In 2019 KLM launched an official complaint with Boeing about "loose seats, missing and incorrectly installed pins, nuts and bolts not properly tightened, and a fuel line clamp left unsecured." In 2020 the vast majority of the fleet suffered from depressions in the 787s tail fins. Workers at the Charleston Assembly plant had "had improperly discarded shims before the final installation of fasteners, which could lead to structural failure under limited loads." Eight 787s were grounded due to issues with the aircraft skin.

In September 2021 Boeing admitted to further failures in the rear fuselage and the FAA started investigating Boeing's quality control lapses since the introduction of the arcraft and mandated additioal inspections to 900 of the 1,000 Dreamliners then produced. A further quality control issue relating to the horizontal stablizers was discovered in 893 of these aircraft.

In Janary 2021 Boeing had already halted 787 deliveries, with very few then delivered until July 2022. In 2024 a Boeing engineer whistleblower claimed the 787 fuselage had been incorrectly assembled and that this could cause an aircraft to break up in flight. Early this year Italian authorities discovered a fraud scheme involving over 4,800 parts due to be installed in 787s. Certifications had been falsified.  

Faults continue. Just this month a newly delivered 787-900 to American Airlines experienced multiple technical faults that led to the cancellation of many of its early scheduled flights. "Challenges in delivering defect-free aircraft persist."

https://www.aviacionline.com/boeing-787-dreamliner-a-history-of-technical-challenges-under-scrutiny-after-first-fatal-accident

[Pete1111]

Yes, Boeing has a reputation of overprioritizing profits above everything,

yet the Air India crash is a good example of why it may be best to avoid believing in theories offered by unedited content on the internet,

whether blaming Boeing or something else.  

While we wait for answers from the crash investigations,   I appreciate how the Royals included a moment of silence and wore black arm bands to pay respect to the air crash victims, during the Sovereign's Birthday Parade on Saturday  

An example for the rest.

 

 

[Moses]

3 minutes ago, Pete1111 said:

Royals

Bunch of cosplayers. Real examples are Diana, Harry and Megan... Rest are just clowns.

[PeterRS]

6 hours ago, Pete1111 said:

Yes, Boeing has a reputation of overprioritizing profits above everything,

yet the Air India crash is a good example of why it may be best to avoid believing in theories offered by unedited content on the internet,

I think all commentators here have stressed that it is way too early to know why this crash happened. But it is perfectly reasonable in my view to relate the problematic history of this particular aircraft which has been ordered grounded not once but twice - and for quite long periods. If you cast your mind back and recall the problems of the early DC10s, following fatal crashes in 1972, 1974 and 1979 the aircfaft was grounded, but only for 37 days. In 2013, the 787 was grounded for more than 3 months. Then deliveries of the aircraft were halted by Boeing for 18 months beween January 2021 and July 2022. That's a monstrous amount of time for an aircraft that had already been in service for years. Delivereies were again halted in February 2023, this time over a fuselage issue.

Earlier this year the FAA asked Boeing to fix a critical sofware flaw in the Dreamliner when it was discovered that the aircraft's VHS communications system could switch between active and standby modes without any crew input. This could result in a failure of communication between the cockpit and flight controllers, with possible catastrophic results. An FAA mandated software patch fix was installed, but even then Qatar Airways announced the communications issues peristed in its 787s even after installing the FAA recommended software patches. Yet another FAA mandated directive was issued in late March this year when "excessive gaps" and "improper installation" were discovered in the forward pressure bulkead. This new airworthiness directive applies to all 787s in service with all airlines.

Re the AI 787 which returned to Hong Kong on Monday, a similar unexplained descent had recently occurred in a LATAM aircraft.

I write this having flown the 787 well over a dozen times and never had a worry. I happen to prefer the Airbus A350 for various reasons, but that is just a personal choice. But problems which seem to have  habit of continuing in the 787 now start to concern me. When you add into the mix, the disaster of the 737 Max and its grounding for nearly 21 months, and then the continuing manufacturing problems Boeing has been encountering with mounting regularity with its new 777X which was supposed to enter service with Lufthansa in December 2019 (Boeing now says the launch will be later next year - Emirates, the largest customer for the plane with its order pared down from an initial 150 now to 90, estimates 2028), I think expressing a concern about Boeing and its manufacturing record is perfectly acceptable.

The 777X issues and its huge delays are likely to cost Boeing massive penalties. Airlines have been forced to continue using the older less fuel efficient 777s in addition to retrofitting existing cabins with those they had planned for the 777X. This is costing airlines billions of $$$$. Law suits are bound to start flying around. 

https://aviationsourcenews.com/faa-to-mandate-further-boeing-787-structural-inspection/