Doomed Air India flight 171 may have been running on an emergency-power generator and could have suffered double engine failure when it crashed, investigators believe.
Preliminary findings have raised questions over whether the plane’s engines were working properly during take-off, the Wall Street Journal reports citing investigation insiders.
The Gatwick-bound Air India aircraft, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, crashed on a medical college hostel soon after taking off from the west Indian city of Ahmedabad last Thursday, killing at least 270 people.
The Boeing was not much more than 400ft above ground when the two experienced pilots onboard apparently lost power in both engines.
They then had 17 agonising seconds to wrestle with the controls before their plane smashed into a medical college packed with doctors, sending a fireball soaring into the sky.
Experts from India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau are probing the crash with assistance from the UK, the US and officials from Boeing.
As investigations into the disaster are underway, one focus of the probe into the crash is whether the plane suffered a loss or reduction of thrust.
Emergency systems used in planes are known as ram air turbines. They are small propellers that drop from the bottom of the plane’s fuselage to operate as a backup generator.
These emergency systems usually deploy automatically in flight if both engines have failed or if hydraulic system pressures are low, and can deploy if cockpit instruments lose power.
Sources close to the investigation suggest that findings from the crash indicate that the plane’s flaps and other flight-control surfaces had been configured for takeoff.
Authorities investigating the tragic airplane crash are also studying the black boxes of the plane, and are also looking at whether it was overloaded.
Amit Singh, a former pilot and an aviation expert, said the recovery of the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, or black boxes, are crucial to piece together the sequence of events.
The cockpit voice recorder records pilots’ conversation, emergency alarms and any distress signal made before a crash. The plane’s digital flight data recorder stores information related to engine and control settings. Both devices are designed to survive a crash.
‘The data will reveal everything,’ Singh said, adding that the technical details could be corroborated by the cockpit voice recorder that would help investigators know of any communication between air traffic control and the pilots.
India’s aviation regulatory body has said pilots Sumeet Sabharwal and Clive Kunder made a mayday call before the crash.
Singh said the investigating authorities will scan CCTV footage of the nearby area and speak with witnesses to get to the root cause of the crash.
Additionally, Singh said, the investigators will also study the pilot training records, total load of the aircraft, thrust issues related to the plane’s engine, as well as its worthiness in terms of past performances and any previously reported issues.
The Indian government has set up a separate, high-level committee to examine the causes leading to the crash and formulate procedures to prevent and handle aircraft emergencies in the future.
The committee is expected to file a preliminary report within three months.
Earlier this week, a new bombshell video provided evidence that the Air India Boeing 787 lost power immediately after take off, leading to the catastrophic crash that killed all but one on board, according to an aviation expert.
Commercial airline pilot Steve Schreiber, who analyses plane crashes and close calls, said a new HD-quality video is a ‘gamechanger’ in diagnosing the cause.
He says it reveals the doomed Dreamliner suffered a ‘dual engine failure’ before the worst aviation disaster in more than a decade.
Initially Mr Schreiber, best known as Captain Steve online, suspected there had been an exceptionally simple error in the cockpit when the co-pilot was asked to retract the landing gear, with devastating consequences.
However, a higher quality version of the original video of the crash has emerged, with higher quality visuals and sound, which Mr Schreiber believes could prove that a dual engine failure led to the plane’s terrifying final moments.
The 63-year-old, who has 26 years of flying experience – including 11 as a captain – and has flown in 60 different aircraft, said a tiny detail which can be seen on the new video is a ‘total gamechanger’.
Mr Schreiber explained on his Youtube channel Captain Steeeve that beneath the right wing of the aeroplane, he could see a ‘protrusion on the belly of the aircraft’. Underneath that there is a ‘little grey dot’, he added.
He said this is evidence of the RAT deploying on the plane.
‘Many aeroplanes have it,’ he said. ‘It is just behind the wing on the right side of the aeroplane, there is a little door that holds it in.
‘It looks like a little Evinrude motor, it’s a little two bladed prop.
‘The purpose is to provide electrical and hydraulic pressure for the aircraft on an extreme emergency.’
Mr Schreiber said that on a 787 there are three things that will deploy the RAT automatically.
He said: ‘A massive electrical failure, a massive hydraulic failure, or a dual engine failure.
‘Any one of those three things will cause that RAT to deploy.’
The aviation expert said that the protrusion and the grey dot were visual evidence of the RAT deploying on the aircraft.
He added: ‘That little grey dot is the RAT. The protrusion is the door that opened to allow the rat to come down.’
Authorities have also begun inspecting and carrying out additional maintenance and checks of Air India’s entire fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners to prevent any future incident. Air India has 33 Dreamliners in its fleet.
There were 53 British nationals on board Flight AI171 when it crashed into a residential area near the airport, as well as 159 Indian nationals, seven Portuguese citizens and a Canadian.
This is a breaking news story, more to follow.
