Apparently there was one survivor. He walked away.
British passenger in seat 11A survives India plane crash, reports say
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That’s insane.
I’ll be damned, maybe you do want to sit in those seats by the Exit doors?
At the risk of armchair quarterbacking things after this just happened, me thinks it was a dual engine failure on takeoff.
The RAT/Ram Air Turbine was deployed indicating a loss of electrical and they clearly were not climbing.
Even if it was single engine, the 787, like any modern airliner, can perform just fine.
This is such a tragedy.
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I have seen dual engine failure as the likely culprit, but that begs the question as to how both engines - normally rock-solid reliable - failed at the same time.
Bird strike is one possible explanation (see Berger, Sullen). But those are some big-ass engines - much bigger than on the A320 that Sully was flying, and he ran into a flock of geese - so it would have to be some big-ass birds to take out both engines on a 787.
Could an electrical failure shut down both engines?
Here’s what the survivor said:
“Thirty seconds after takeoff, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly.”
So the engines didn’t just shut down. Something happened.
There’s so much redundancy in the electrical systems. Highly unlikely. Not impossible but unlikely.
That thing was running the GE engines, which are nearly bulletproof. It would have to be a flock of big birds, I’d think. The older Rolls Royce engines on the 787 were much more fragile.
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Yeah. Those things simply don’t fail, so two at the same time has to be something external to them or the aircraft.
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No, the engine driven generators would be off in an engine failure single or dual- it would be on battery power. The APU can provide electrical for the aircraft, but getting it online/up and running can take a minute or so which they probably didn’t have time to do.
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Nearly.
We’ve had some catastrophic engine failures the past few years, 2 in 6 mos my first year at SWA. The federales ordered an inspection of all the low pressure fan blades/N1 section/the blades you see in the front of the engine nacelle on all the engines in ‘19. The new LEAP engines are incredibly fuel efficient, quiet and have solid performance, much better than the CFMs.
We still have the CFMs on the -700/800s, they’re damn reliable, and I’ll still take them.
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Yikes, this start to end video is tough to watch. Low rez at this distance but no obvious flocks of birds. It’s like it ran out of gas or something. @JohnS I don’t see flaps extended but don’t know the wing structure well enough to tell at this distance.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/12/world/video/air-india-plane-crash-expert-analysis-digvid
I never heard of a RAT before.
I still think flaps error is a possibility.
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They’re very common on airliners, though the 737 does not have one oddly.
I have to break away from airline carnage to post this:
That’s my little brother in his modified Q2! (Don’t ask him how long the build took.) At least one of us is famous now.
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Hoover discusses the various theories of the crash.
