The devastating crash of Air India flight AI-171 on Wednesday has put the entire country on edge and exposed the potential lack of safety steps in India’s aviation sector. A video of the crash that is going viral on social media has put forth a series of serious questions for the aviation experts.
Bob Mann, head of aviation consultant RW Mann & Co. tells Bloomberg that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner appeared to be struggling to gain speed, even when it had covered almost the entire length of the 11,000-foot long runway, which he says, should have been enough for the plane to takeoff.
Technical problems before lift-off?
Experts believe that the flight might have faced problems even before it left the runway. Mann says that one possible issue could be incorrect settings in the aircraft’s computer, like entering the wrong weight of the plane.
This mistake can affect how much power the engines need for takeoff. If the weight entered is more than the actual weight, the plane may take off too sharply. But if it’s less than the real weight, the engines may not provide enough power to lift off properly.
Mann stresses that his comments are just observations and not confirmed yet, as the flight data and voice recorders have not been recovered.
Raised flaps or mistake in flight control computer programming?
Another expert, Jeff Guzzetti, told Bloomberg, “You don’t see any smoke or fire or engines burping or anything like that. You don’t see any structural failure occurring.” He added that it appeared as if the plane was just unable to fly up once it got off the runway.
Guzzetti explained that there could be a number of reasons behind this, including the raised flaps instead of the landing gear or a mistake on flight control computer programming. However he added that no one knows at this point of time.
Mann too said the flaps appeared to be incorrectly positioned, and if they were being adjusted later then that too could have lead the plane to lose lift and stall in the air.
The flight was carrying 242 passengers, out of which 241 have been confirmed dead by Air India.
Investigators from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will be going to India to help with the investigation into the plane crash, the Bloomberg report said. More details about what happened are expected to come out once officials find the crashed plane’s black boxes.
These include the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, which store important information about the plane’s systems and what the pilots were saying and doing in the final moments of the flight.