Air Accident / Incident thread

Would it be unusual to still have the gear down and be trying to communicate with the tower??

Aviate, navigate then communicate and all that......

Mis-selection of flaps on the gear up call is a possibility given that there appears to be no flaps deployed. Also reported on AV Herald (earlier, site appears to be down now) and looks to be true looking at the FR24 playback, that witnesses stated it did not back track the runway on departure, but took off from the intersection. My google maps measurements indicate that the actual take off distance available from the intersection is less than 1900m (as opposed to over 3.5km from full length).
I can't say for sure, because I don't have the performance data for the Dreamliner, but in temperatures approaching 40c and with a pretty full load and going the distance they were it must have been very, very tight to get it into the air over that short of a take-off run.

I know there's no sense in speculating but just putting my observations out there.

That looks more like an aircraft trimmed to land to me. Something catastrophic has clearly gone wrong in the FMC setup, or the management of the weight of fuel and cargo across the airframe. No positive climb rate was achieved and a tragic outcome.

RIP to all aboard, and probably a number on the ground.

Just curious as a non-aviator why the high temperature would make a difference?

Within their performance characteristics, yes. Long runways, long takeoff rolls, sometimes even weight restrictions occur

A few years ago it got too hot in Phoenix for Bombardier aircraft to take off as the performance charts didn't cover it.

I'm no aviation expert either, but from a power generation perspective, a gas turbine (essentially a much bigger jet engine) is more efficient in colder temperatures as the air being colder means it's molecules are smaller/more dense, and therefore you can get more of them in to the combustion chambers… any time we were doing a performance test on a gas turbine, we'd always aim to run it at the coldest part of the day to achieve the highest efficiency..

but like the folk above mentioned, the expected result can be calculated based on the given parameters..

Would warnings not ring out if the plane started to roll with the wrong flap selection?

Or is that even a thing?

On CNN they were live to reporter in India on scene, reporter said the survivor told officials he pulled the emergency exit door and jumped out the plane going down the runway.

The plane did use full runway. Reports that it didn't were based off FR data which wasn't accurate.

Has it been confirmed that the RAT deployed? The video footage I seen was inconclusive.

No clue, but it's what the reporter said he said '' he heard a loud bang, and pulled the emergency door and jumped out as the plane took off ''

Whilst that’s possible I’m not going to assume any of that. It’s just as possible the media are responsible for any inconsistencies. The reporter’s comments BorneTobyWilde mentions are a recall of what the survivor said & not a quote.