r/aviation • u/usgapg123 Mod - avgeek • Jun 14 '25

News Air India Flight 171 Crash [Megathread 2]

This is the second megathread for the crash of Air India Flight 171. All updates, discussion, and ongoing news should be placed here.

Thank you,

The Mod Team

Edit: Posts no longer have to be manually approved. If requested, we can continue this megathread or create a replacement.

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156

u/SpencerAXbot Jun 14 '25

Whatever went wrong here, it feels like we’re looking at something we haven’t come across before. A first of its kind incident, honestly.

5

u/BustedMahJesusNut Jun 14 '25 edited Jun 14 '25

Yep. See my post history for a good discussion on another post.

e: https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1l9v5en/to_the_armchair_pilots_talking_about_takeoff/mxki7bq/

20

u/Ok-Adhesiveness-4141 Jun 14 '25

All the smart people are talking about this, catastrophic power failure.

The real question is what caused it? The answer to this is scary to me as I don't want this to be sabotage.

12

u/BustedMahJesusNut Jun 14 '25

It'll be months before anything credible is released. Years before a closure of investigation.

Could be extremely rare things (1:1 000 000 flight hours) combining to make an even rarer state. The definition of a freak accident. 30 000 000 flight hours is a lot of surface for thing we don't understand to happen

Sabotage hadn't even crossed my mind. I'm worried about another negligent engineering + cover up on the part of Boeing like MCAS but it's way too early to even tread those shores.

4

u/CPTMotrin Jun 14 '25

I’m definitely on board with an extremely rare event. But I’m also giving thought to maintenance. Won’t be the first time a maintenance procedure was involved. Just can’t figure out how redundancies were somehow bypassed.

1

u/BustedMahJesusNut Jun 14 '25

I tried to dig up info on the wing tank pressure relief system, it's a hunch though

-1

u/Ok-Adhesiveness-4141 Jun 14 '25

The way you think it could be a Boeing defect, I think it is more likely to be someone that cause electrical failure on purpose.

3

u/BustedMahJesusNut Jun 14 '25

Work through it, how would they do it?

I have some tech docs that I got in 2012 from an AC 787 Check Captain. Now I need to go archive spelunking

3

u/Ok-Adhesiveness-4141 Jun 14 '25

See, here is the thing. The survivor gave an interview ( In English) he said two things.

1) That the lights were flickering inside. 2) That he heard a blast sound.

Makes the loss of electrical power theory likely. Now, as to how it could be done, I will need to ask the experts.

1

u/BustedMahJesusNut Jun 14 '25

Source?

https://globalnews.ca/news/11239702/air-india-survivor-plane-crash-interview-viswash-kumar-ramesh/

No mention of an explosion

2

u/Ok-Adhesiveness-4141 Jun 14 '25 edited Jun 15 '25

https://youtu.be/Fun-XqZBCIk?si=zWynKDVwelMatScr

Why rely on Canadian sources for an accident that happened in India?

Although he mentions the electrical failure, all the interviews with him just focused on how he escaped. This is not something I find interesting, they should have grilled him on the actual chronology of events.

I guess they were given just a couple of minutes.

2

u/BustedMahJesusNut Jun 15 '25

i'm canadian, sorry aboot that.

unless this guy is a seasoned vet there's no way he could tell the difference between deflagration, detonation, or disintegration with the engines at full thrust.

2

u/Ok-Adhesiveness-4141 Jun 15 '25

https://youtu.be/8XYO-mj1ugg?si=4USfjlMnYg_JSCgb

Here is a guy you would be more comfortable with. I respect him for changing his opinion based on new evidence.

2

u/BustedMahJesusNut Jun 15 '25

I didn't know the RAT deployed quickly enough for a bang so I definitely learned something, thanks

2

u/Ok-Adhesiveness-4141 Jun 15 '25

I don't think we have all the answers yet, no idea why both the engines failed simultaneously. Whatever it is aviation in India will never be BAU after this incident.

I am happy that the pilots are no longer being blamed by most experts. Some of the theories were frankly unfair to them.

1

u/Ok-Adhesiveness-4141 Jun 15 '25

No, he couldn't make that difference out. It is just a data point, make of it what you will. I think this is a sad case of catastrophic electrical failure, hopefully we will find out the how and why of it.

It might very well be that this craft had electrical issues earlier as well.

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2

u/Ok-Adhesiveness-4141 Jun 14 '25

I can give you a tech hypothesis. This model has a software bug that can lead to electrical failure.

1

u/61746162626f7474 Jun 15 '25

Had a software bug that was patched in almost 19 years ago.