And one man walked away from that. The mind boggles.
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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More like staggered, but yes.
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'm not an expert, but pretty much every plane crash expert on the planet is watching the same footage and saying they don't know what's happened.
It's absurd to suggest the pilots accidentally retracted the flaps and no one figured that out yet.
Damn, did I miss the plane crash expert unison chant again?
It's less that you missed it and more that they chose not to invite you
:(
I don't get what you mean by "and no one figured that out yet." As you said yourself, no one knows what happened yet. Pretty much all we have at this point are the videos, and all we can confirm from them is a rough flight path of the plane and that the landing gear remained down after what appeared to be a normal takeoff. I haven't seen any footage that clearly shows the state of the flaps with any certainty, but please correct me if I've missed something.
In my mind, that leaves us with three possible scenarios:
- Pilot error (retracting the flaps instead of the landing gear)
- Dual engine failure at the critical moment (there's no evidence of this in the videos, but also nothing ruling it out)
- Something else (we don't know what we don't know)
From the two scenarios (pilot error, engine failure) that fit the flight path from the videos, the option one seems more plausible to me. But that’s just my armchair opinion, it doesn't mean anything. All we can really do is wait for the investigation and the preliminary report.
I don't get what you mean by "and no one figured that out yet."
I mean there's many experts watching the same footage who are not making an assertion that the pilots got confused about the landing gear and the flaps.
They're also not saying it couldn't have happened, are they? They're waiting for investigators to gather all the facts before making any statements, just like they should.
Meanwhile, we here on the internet are just speculating based on the limited information available (basically just the video footage). Based on the current information we have, my opinion is that pilot error is the most likely cause.
You're free to disagree about the likelihood of different scenarios, but right now we have no evidence that makes the theory of the pilots accidentally retracting the flaps instead of the gear impossible or "absurd." It's really counterproductive to start ruling out scenarios without concrete proof.
It's really counter-productive to play armchair air crash investigator.
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?
I think the simplest explanation, and the most likely one, is the pilots were too busy dealing with whatever shit was hitting the fan to raise the landing gear.
And, in my view, that's a loss of engine power for whatever reason, possibly bad fuel.
The plane was in takeoff config: https://imgur.com/a/JzS3ro9
According to type rated pilots the 787 doesn’t allow you to retract flaps immediately in critical flight after takeoff.
According to type rated pilots the 787 doesn’t allow you to retract flaps immediately in critical flight after takeoff.
That's interesting. Do you have the source for that? I wasn't able to find a definitive answer with google
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.
Flaps are typically retracted not long after takeoff anyway, every flight I've been on has done that.
There are minimum airspeeds the aircraft must reach before the flaps can be safely retracted. I don't know the exact numbers, but assuming a standard flaps 5 takeoff for B787, retraction to flaps 1 would occur around 1000 ft by earliest, that's typically 20 to 30 seconds after the takeoff.
Looks like it stalled due to lack of thrust. What could have killed both engines right after takeoff?
I was just thinking about this, perhaps when the aircraft rotated, water or other contaminants got drawn into the fuel system?
Or shifting cargo damaged the fuel lines?
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.
Feeling suicidal?
Agree with your comment regarding the pilots but the plane has with Air India for 13 years. If there was a mechanical problem it’s likely to be maintenance at fault. And I say that as someone who goes out of their way to not fly Boeing.
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.
Is it common for CCTV to track and follow all planes as they take off like the camera in this video seems to be?
I think that's editing, rather than something the camera did.
You can see a mouse cursor in the video. Someone is manually zooming in and following the plane, likely while reviewing the footage.
Ah, OK yeah that makes sense.
I don't know for sure, but I imagine all airports have a bunch of cameras. To me it looks like it was a wider shot and someone went and focused on it through the NVR.
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is it going fast enough for the RAT to deploy?
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.
"Did I fill the water in the right hole on that plane?" -- Guy at the airport driving the freshwater tanker.
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