242 on board. Prospects for them not looking good…
No amount of compensation will make this easier for the sole survivor. That's an unimaginable thing to have to live with
Must be the luckiest man on the planet.
I can't imagine even a bizarre scenario in which someone in the 11th row would walk away from that explosion. I suppose the hull broke there and his seat somehow launched far from the fireball. But it was a plane full to the brim with fuel and he was right in the middle of it.. Mind boggling.
11a is at one of the exits
https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Air_India/Air_India_Boeing_787-8.php
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. So for all we know, this guy caused it, why would he open a door and jump out before a thing happened, and maybe the opening of the door caused plane not to fly.He was not on the plane when it crashed, or maybe he's a hoax, and was not ever on the plane.
Jumping out of a plane at takeoff speed. A perfect crime
I very much doubt the man would be able to walk if he jumped out of a Boeing 787 going over 100mph down a runway
In any event the guy stated “When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran. There were pieces of the plane all around me. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital.”
I suspect it was a bird strike. Another dumb mistake could maybe have been contaminated aviation fuel? It's very very unusual that both engines fail all of a sudden. They should find the flight recorder easily so we may have some answers soon.
Astonishing how someone could walk away from that crash, info is very sketchy. I guess the proximity of the emergency exit at seat 11A was a factor. Anyone know if the emergency chute would have got deployed to allow him to get away from the fireball?
The cctv vid shows what looks like smoke but the plane continues to ascend which would presumably not happen if the engines failed
11A surprises me. Normally it's in the very back of the plane where one would be most likely to survive a crash. So I presume the proximity to the emergency exit was a very strong factor.
That sure is strange. There were also discussions on the position of the flaps and why the wheels were not up. We just have to wait for the flight recorder data.
Ignore the Daily Fail claims. It's not the doomed flight. It is however the same plane from a flight a few hours earlier. There is obviously something wrong with the circuits / electronics. You'd have to wonder did this play a role in the crash and why was the plane allowed to proceed with its fatal flight.
I'd presuming that TV screens, air con, cabin lights, etc, however, would be on a separate system to the flaps, engines etc?
I'm reluctant to speculate, but if multiple electronic systems go down then it's usually an uncontained fire that causes it
Very different theory here. Seems unlikely to me. The plane's attitude doesn't look that abnormal in the videos
https://www.irishtimes.com/world/asia-pacific/2025/06/12/analysis-early-indications-pilot-decision-to-raise-nose-of-air-india-plane-may-have-caused-crash/
The survivor has been quoted saying he heard a loud bang about 30 seconds after takeoff and bird strike could be a cause of that, but wouldn't you see other evidence in terms of debris and engine damage? Sounds more like something catastrophic happened inside the plane. I'd say there were a few sleepless nights in Seattle last night..
The survivor is not a reliable source and 30 seconds after takeoff could have been the landing gear hitting a building. The plane was down in about 30 seconds after takeoff.
The screen in front is working OK.
I wouldn't discount it completely. He could have meant 30 seconds from starting the takeoff, which seems to be around the time it starts to lose altitude. You would think everyone on board knew something serious was up for the last 15 seconds roughly, which is a significant enough time before the landing gear hit the building.
Sure, not discount it completely but consider he's just a regular guy who went through something terrible and traumatic.
Those emergency door don’t open in flight, they lock. Anyone having a breakdown and trying to open a door mid flight can’t.
Yeah that's absolute horseshít and never happened. Some sick cnuts really will say anything for 15 seconds of fame
"aviation journalist" uhuh
First he says non-deployment of flaps was not the cause (based on what?) then he says it was a factor
when the nose was pushed up, the aircraft was already failing to climb, and looked to be actually descending, so whatever went wrong was before that, it should have been climbing out quite steeply
This sentence is clueless:
When the aircraft is almost on the runway, they raise the nose slightly to eradicate lift and make it drop the remaining short distance on to the tarmac.
Raising the nose increases lift! up to a point - as long as you don't stall the wing.
The flare is done not to "drop the aircraft down" 🙄 but to reduce the rate of descent for a more cushioned landing
Sometimes (rarely) pilots get their rate of descent wrong and don't flare in time and that results in a very hard landing and sometimes damage
I'm no pilot but it's pretty obvious this fella doesn't have much of a clue what he's talking about.
Then he's back to flaps being needed after all.
Without sufficient extension of the flaps, an aircraft that is fully loaded with passengers, luggage and fuel will struggle to reach altitude.
Well yes, that's why they're there. The Spanair flight he mentioned didn't even make it off the runway.
A bird strike taking out both engines totally and instantly would be extremely rare. There would be obvious smoke etc. coming out of the engines as the bits went through
I think it was an Asiana flight last year or the year before, that a passenger opened a door on descent about a couple of hundred feet up
If there's any significant pressure differential between inside and outside the force of pressurization makes it impossible to open the door
There is no way to jump out a plane doing takeoff speed and survive. Absolutely no way. That's Bollywood level of incredible stunt.
But I'm pretty sure you can open the emergency exit doors at that altitude, l don't think there is a lock other than the one you're supposed to operate. But the lack of pressure difference that doesn't prevent the doors from being open also doesn't do anything to the plane either.
And this ….
Raising the nose inappropriately was a contributing factor to the crash of an Air France A330 off the coast of Brazil in 2009. It caused the plane to enter a stall from which the pilots could not recover. All 228 on board were killed.
I think that's a fairly wild comparison.
By the way, this seems to be the best video footage, taken from airport CCTV. It's horrendous!
He'd have been luckier still if he and his brother had missed that flight…
Any comparison to Air France 447 is ludicrous.
Where did the Irish Times find that guy?
Problem is what actually happened seems almost as far-fetched, given how quickly the fireball appears to have engulfed the plane after it crashed
Apologies if this was already posted
https://prospect.org/economy/2025-06-12-dreamliner-gave-boeing-manager-nightmares-just-crashed-air-india/
The Inflight Entertainment system definitely is. I had to fly to New York for a work conference back in early 2024 and ended up on a brand-new Virgin Atlantic A350 where the IFE system just randomly kept rebooting through the entire flight. We’d have never gotten off the ground in Heathrow if that system had been linked directly to the flight controls.
I've flown Air India on maybe 20 flights over the last 2 years, not once was the IFE working.
It's completely separate to flight controls.
