Originally published at: Air India Pilot Issued Mayday: 'Thrust Not Achieved' - AVweb
Poor-quality video basis for rampant speculation about crash cause.
Could I really be the only person on here or Facebook or elsewhere who has pointed out the trajectory of this aircraft with its long, slender, elegant wings resembles a classic “ “Lifting off thanks to ground effect, climbing out of ground effect at a wingspan AGL , and thus settling back in” accident whether that airspeed deficit is due to power loss or no flaps or something else. In panic mode that ESL radio caller may have meant to say “ no lift” rather than “no thrust”.
In today’s english speaking edition of “were the deck chairs properly aligned on the titanic” we can clearly see how that radio call mattered to all those lost lives in India.
Captain obvious at your service.
Good note, but recognize the effect diminishes with height - it is not a sudden cutoff.
It is a clue as to what the crew were grasping.
Hopefully the CVR will be found with useable information on it - a fire smouldering for a long time would not be good.
What I studied was that ground effect was a consideration within 1/2 of the wingspan of altitude. This aircraft climbed 400 feet (and the climb looked smooth for a heavy aircraft on a hot day), so I discount that theory. Also, the mayday call was “lost power - no thrust” – this was reported last evening and is somewhat at variance with this article.
If they shot a fully loaded 787 down the runway to rotation speed, then “thrust was achieved”. I can only guess that the pilot misinterpreted the situation and was still confused when the plane settled downward.
I’m astonished from armchair quarterbacks sans 8,000 hours of flight time.
Speaking of experience, I’m never astonished that these so-called accidents happen primarily with foreign air carriers like India, Malaysia , Korea, Ethiopia and Indonesia.
That might be because the US has a small population compared to the rest of the world and a whole lot fewer airplanes/airlines. The world does not end at the US border.
Not ground effect. the aircraft would not have climbed away at all and just floated along till the airspeed dropped below stall.
Facts:- The pilot not flying declared a loss of thrust in his mayday. The RAT DID deploy as the noise was audible and it was clearly visible in some of the videos. The only speculation is why would two engines simultaneously suffer the same thrust roll-back? The primary answer is obviously loss of fuel flow, either from the airframe, or within the engines, but why?
Inadequate knowledge alert!
‘Ground effect’ on drag and lift diminishes quickly with altitude AGL, there is no cutoff as one poster thinks but the amount quickly becomes irrelevantly small.
You aren’t making sense.
You should integrate all factors, including trading speed for altitude.
RAT deployment is very interesting.
The FDR recording if useable should show at what point thrust declined.
I note that apparently the airplane used all of the runway, if observed dust was off the end so airplane quite low. (But normal obstacle clearance requirements with loss of thrust of one engine only specify 35 feet above end of runway, though in this case there was an obstacle on or near the flight path - the building the airplane hit.
One SOP is to make an acceleration check at 80 knot or so, perhaps more in an overspeed takeoff - has expected distance down runway been achieved? That requires an estimate of that distance for the particular takeoff.
(‘Feel’ of performance many not be accurate. Testing of B737-200C at 2500 feet high Edmonton International at high weight, hot day showed normal performance while crews felt airplane was not performing correctly.
We operate the safest and most robust air service of any nation. By a huge margin too.
Have you checked those assertions against any actual data? Smaller population does not correlate with fewer aircraft or airliners.
There is one airport in Alaska with 500 seaplane slips. There’s a waiting list. How many seaplanes in your baseline densely-populated nation? A dozen? Major US airlines operate thousands of aircraft, some overseas, but I bet if you find the actual numbers you will find that US airlines still eclipse China, India, or any other country in terms of number of aircraft, enplanements, seat-miles, operations, number of qualified pilots, or just about any metric you can dream up.
They had limited speed, so how are they going to trade for altitude.I think it is you that has a lack of knowledge.
Exactly what I wrote!