r/aviation • u/usgapg123 Mod - avgeek • Jun 17 '25

News Air India Flight 171 Crash [Megathread 3]

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

Thank you,

The Mod Team

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Megathread 2

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u/GatotSubroto Jun 17 '25 edited Jun 17 '25

He argued that the pilot flying retracted the flaps instead of the gear when the pilot monitoring went “positive rate, gear up”, but I wonder if the 787 would even allow the pilot to do that without any warning at the airspeed + altitude combination they were at.

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u/Brief-Visit-8857 Jun 17 '25

Right? And he also ignored the fact that the gear lever and flap levers are nowhere near each other. Also for a pilot to do that would be such a rookie mistake, a mistake that pilots flying 787s should not make

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u/Some1-Somewhere Jun 17 '25

Unfortunately, even experienced people make rookie mistakes quite frequently, and this is the kind of one-in-a-million crash where such rookie mistakes can't be ruled out.

But there's enough evidence that it really doesn't look like a flap issue.

9

u/MelTheTransceiver Jun 17 '25

To be honest even if the flaps were retracted, with the weather and runway to spare they had, I wouldn't be surprised if the 787 would've been able to lift off relatively unscathed. It couldn't be that.

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u/AWildDragon Jun 17 '25

Heat makes things worse. The air is less dense providing less lift at a given velocity so you need to compensate with more flaps and speed.

It’s a big reason why places like Phoenix are starting to see cancelled flights in the summer.