Looks like it stalled due to lack of thrust. What could have killed both engines right after takeoff?
For multi engine planes it’s pretty rare, most likely a fuel system failure, or less likely pilot throttling error. My money would be on something with the fuel system.
It seems to climb OK for a little while then suddenly start sinking. There’s no sign of an obvious engine problem. Not sure whether we’d be able to see any sign of a bird strike from this far away.
bird strike taking out both engines? nah.
This has to be pilot error. Even at stall, it looks like pilot didn’t even try to level out.
It is a Boeing plane. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions on the pilots being at fault.
Fair Point
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Yeah, it’s rather strange. There is another one from a perspective where the aircraft almost “overflew” the cameraman (basically at a 5’o clock angle)- it shows them having aileron and elevator control right until they crash. And while the quality is poor, I am somewhat convinced that the RAT has not deployed (yet?)
A bird strike would likely have caused something visible So it doesn’t sound like hydraulics or fuel(water in the fueltanks?) or something electronic wise with the engine control. Strange and sad.
I just saw that video and it is really strange. Not so much that rat hasn’t been deployed, I don’t think they lost hydraulics or electronics and I’m not sure they even reached the minimum speed where the rat would really help.
The strange thing is that it didn’t really look like there was very much yaw or rolling which you would expect to see with a fuel system failure. They seemed to be flying straight as an arrow and gliding it down?
Maybe something wrong with thrust control? Kinda crazy.
Yeah,I am not sure if there is a safety interlock with Boeing RATs(and the video is really bad)…so it might be intentional.
It’s strange. Personally I currently go with water in the fuel system as the “most likely guess by a armchair pilot”(me),but wouldn’t also be surprised being it an electronic error. When that would be the case Boeing would be fucked beyond repair,imho.
Something wrong with the fuel system was my initial armchair guess, but I’m not so sure based off the second vid. One would expect to see some yaw or rolling in an underpowered or lost of power take off with a jet.
Guess we’ll have to wait until someone more qualified explains it.
Is it common for CCTV to track and follow all planes as they take off like the camera in this video seems to be?
is it going fast enough for the RAT to deploy?
“Did I fill the water in the right hole on that plane?” – Guy at the airport driving the freshwater tanker.
Wake turbulence?
Definitely not.
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.
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.
One theory circulating online is that the pilots may have accidentally retracted the flaps instead of the landing gear. Apparently that would result in kind of a flight path seen on the published videos.
While this cannot be confirmed or ruled out with the information we have, in my opinion the available videos seem to kinda support this theory. Initially the aircraft appears to take off and climb normally, but for some reason the gear is not being retracted when usually it would be retracted right after the takeoff.
Naturally the gear could be forgotten or left intentionally down if there were a dual engine failure right after takeoff, for example, but as the videos show no evidence of this, I’m more inclined to believe in simple pilot error.
I did see one person commenting on the other video that they could see the flaps were in the wrong position. And it is conspicuous that the landing gear was not retracted - though could that be because the pilots realized they were in trouble and would need to attempt a crash landing, or were too busy with whatever else had gone wrong?
Are the 787’s controls arranged in such a way that you could accidentally retract the flaps instead of the landing gear?
Are the 787’s controls arranged in such a way that you could accidentally retract the flaps instead of the landing gear?
Not in a sense that someone could just grab the wrong lever in the dark for example. The levers are in different parts of the cockpit and also shaped very differently. But we humans can do all kinds of weird mistakes that are hard to explain. Almost everyone has experienced this sometimes. Think something like searching for you phone while it’s in your hand. Afterwards it’s very hard to explain why would anyone do such a silly mistake but it still happened. This would be similar.
And one man walked away from that. The mind boggles.
Good thing they don’t have DEI, oh wait this wasn’t DEI caused, whoda thought.
I guess this is news, although it does little for me. Or for the people mourning the victims.
Looks like something that could have been avoided with a longer runaway
