• thefartographer@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    Why not? Genuinely asking. I thought I remembered wake turbulence being able to cause engine stall or complete shutoff, but I only see that anecdotally, not on the FAA’s website.

    I also thought I’d remembered it being able to cause stalls, but I’m mostly only reading about it causing planes to roll on the FAA’s website.

    • philpo@feddit.org
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      2 days ago

      Wake turbulence requires something to cause the wake - usually another aircraft. Additionally wake turbulences autoregulate themselves - they don’t stay “in the air” but rather disperse rather fast, especially close to the ground. VAAH is a pretty small airport that has no continual taxiway(which they once had,for some strange reason) so aircraft need to backtrack(Basically go in the wrong direction on the RW, then do a U-Turn) at the end of the runway if they go for a take-off runway of RW23.This leads to a long time for any wake turbulence to disperse.

      Additionally the 787 is a mighty big aircraft and mostly wake turbulences affect aircraft that are smaller than the ones which caused it. (This is of course not fully accurate,but it gets complicated then) And the 787 is absolutely powerful enough to power through basically any wake turbulence.

      Last but not least there was not a starting aircraft directly before the flight but a (very small) landing one - so even more time for any wake to disperse.

      So in the end I would be pretty damn sure it wasn’t that.