An Air India passenger plane bound for London and carrying more than 240 people crashed into a medical college after takeoff Thursday in Ahmedabad, India, officials said.
Really it’s far too soon to say and until they get a chance to look over flight data, nobody knows for sure. The RAT would be a good indicator, I know Airbus deploys the RAT automatically in a double engine faliure but am unsure about Boeing’s but asume it’s the same. I have also heard that the airline’s mechanical inspections and maintenance procedures are not great, so maybe that had a role too. The sole survivor said about 30 seconds after takeoff he heard a bang, possibly a bird strike or turbine breaking apart. Even a single engine lost that soon in flight would probably cause a similar outcome to here, the aircraft is at it’s heaviest on take off and didn’t have altitude to work with. But again, lots of guesses from me here.
Really depends how much the pilots were paying attention, a stall should have a few different warnings, both electrically from the AoA indicator and physically how the aircraft behaves. To me it looked like the pilots were doing what they could to gain altitude without stalling in the process, unfortunately there was just no way out in that scenario. If the power loss situation ends up being correct, it’s a very shitty position to be in and was always one of my biggest fears while flying as your options during the initial climb are extremely limited to none at all.
Yeah, you summed up all my thoughts on the subject really great. It really feels that it would be better to have airports a bit further away from population centers, but I know it’s not always feasible.
At least at my local I can glide my little Piper down to the tulip fields, at least that’s what I keep telling myself. Doing it in an airliner… it must have been horrifying for the pilots.
Yeah, India has to be one of the worst places for an accident like this just due to pure population density too. Looking at the direction it took off, they would have had to make it 7 miles at an absolute minimum to clear most of the densely populated area, or turn right and attempt to land in the river. But in this situation it only made it 1 mile, so neither was a possibility.
It’s a whole lot different with an aircraft that size. I mean I used to practice power off forced approaches pretty frequently when I was flying, in small aircraft it’s pretty safe. But that was starting from altitude. How many times have you cut the engine and practiced a power loss situation shortly after takeoff? I don’t believe I ever have at least, closet thing I did to that was a simulated rope break while instructing on gliders and even then we gave ourselves wayyy more altitude than we required and were flying over the airport still when we pulled the release. Plus it’s a glider, so cheating a bit. It’s just too risky even to practice really, because you don’t have an easy out if the engine dies after being pulled to idle or something. Same goes for an airliner but much worse, at most they may have trained for this in a simulator. Best thing you can do to prepare is have altitude based decision gates so you don’t have to think as much and can just act if something does go wrong, even if those decisions are “200 to 500 feet I’m landing in the trees”.
I got lucky and in my years of gliding never had an actual rope break. In fact I only ever heard of one happening at this place while I worked there. They had the ropes down to an art though, inspected multiple times a day and the end inspected on every launch, custom covers for the ring to protect it while dragged down the runway, it was fancy. Being a training facility I suppose that’s smart. Closest I got was during my instructor training with the chief pilot, that’s the only person allowed to do unbriefed emergency simulations. It definitely caught me off guard!
Really it’s far too soon to say and until they get a chance to look over flight data, nobody knows for sure. The RAT would be a good indicator, I know Airbus deploys the RAT automatically in a double engine faliure but am unsure about Boeing’s but asume it’s the same. I have also heard that the airline’s mechanical inspections and maintenance procedures are not great, so maybe that had a role too. The sole survivor said about 30 seconds after takeoff he heard a bang, possibly a bird strike or turbine breaking apart. Even a single engine lost that soon in flight would probably cause a similar outcome to here, the aircraft is at it’s heaviest on take off and didn’t have altitude to work with. But again, lots of guesses from me here.
Really depends how much the pilots were paying attention, a stall should have a few different warnings, both electrically from the AoA indicator and physically how the aircraft behaves. To me it looked like the pilots were doing what they could to gain altitude without stalling in the process, unfortunately there was just no way out in that scenario. If the power loss situation ends up being correct, it’s a very shitty position to be in and was always one of my biggest fears while flying as your options during the initial climb are extremely limited to none at all.
Yeah, you summed up all my thoughts on the subject really great. It really feels that it would be better to have airports a bit further away from population centers, but I know it’s not always feasible.
At least at my local I can glide my little Piper down to the tulip fields, at least that’s what I keep telling myself. Doing it in an airliner… it must have been horrifying for the pilots.
Yeah, India has to be one of the worst places for an accident like this just due to pure population density too. Looking at the direction it took off, they would have had to make it 7 miles at an absolute minimum to clear most of the densely populated area, or turn right and attempt to land in the river. But in this situation it only made it 1 mile, so neither was a possibility.
It’s a whole lot different with an aircraft that size. I mean I used to practice power off forced approaches pretty frequently when I was flying, in small aircraft it’s pretty safe. But that was starting from altitude. How many times have you cut the engine and practiced a power loss situation shortly after takeoff? I don’t believe I ever have at least, closet thing I did to that was a simulated rope break while instructing on gliders and even then we gave ourselves wayyy more altitude than we required and were flying over the airport still when we pulled the release. Plus it’s a glider, so cheating a bit. It’s just too risky even to practice really, because you don’t have an easy out if the engine dies after being pulled to idle or something. Same goes for an airliner but much worse, at most they may have trained for this in a simulator. Best thing you can do to prepare is have altitude based decision gates so you don’t have to think as much and can just act if something does go wrong, even if those decisions are “200 to 500 feet I’m landing in the trees”.
Yeah same, except I had a bunch of actual rope breaks (faulty rope). It’s fucking harrowing.
I got lucky and in my years of gliding never had an actual rope break. In fact I only ever heard of one happening at this place while I worked there. They had the ropes down to an art though, inspected multiple times a day and the end inspected on every launch, custom covers for the ring to protect it while dragged down the runway, it was fancy. Being a training facility I suppose that’s smart. Closest I got was during my instructor training with the chief pilot, that’s the only person allowed to do unbriefed emergency simulations. It definitely caught me off guard!