History had witnessed a deadly aviation accident that one wouldn’t be able to forget anytime soon. Everyone in the aircraft i.e. 242 people perished except the British Indian passenger. A significant number of medicos in the building where the aircraft crashed have also died.
While the blackbox has been recovered now, speculations about the cause of crash has been going rounds ever since the tragic incident happened.
Whenever such kinds of incidents happen, the first speculation always points to a possible fault in the engines. However, many experts believe that the possibility of duel engine failure, that too at the same time is very very rare.
Human Error Invovled? Aviation Expert and Pilot Captain Steeeve Speculates
Captain Steeeve on his Youtube channel opined that the landing gear still down when the flight was airborne was very unusual.
A very important point that he emphasized is that “A Loss of power will contribute to the loss of Lift”
But
“You can have a loss of lift without the loss of power“
What Captain Steeeve is saying that the flight could start losing altitude due to loss of thrust even where there is no problem with Engine power.
This undesired scenario can happen if one of the pilot mistakenly changes the flap settings, especially when he intends to retract the landing gear.
“I think the co-pilot grabbed the flap handle and raised the flaps instead of the gear. If that happens, and its a big if, this explains a lot why this aeroplane stopped flying and why the lift over the wings died because at that point, the flaps are retracting, all that extra lift that you are producing int he wings, goes away.
“You are already slow, you already got the power pushed up all the way. This aeroplane is as heavy as its ever going to be and you still got those great big landing gears out there producing all sorts of drag. This is a bad combination at this point.” said Captain Steeeve on his Youtube Channel.
Fuel Starvation; another possible reason of Engine Stoppage?
Dheeraj Nayyar, a DGCA certified Aviation expert, gave his speculation on a Youtube channel with a prominent journalist.
He opinions that the simultaneous failure of both engines in the aircraft is highly unusual and almost unprecedented in his 26+ years of aviation experience.
As per him, there is a possibility of fuel contamination or deliberate sabotage as the most likely causes.
Drawing a parallel with an older case involving Mr. Anil Ambani’s helicopter, where sand and pebbles were found in the fuel tank—indicating sabotage—he suggests that something similar could have happened here.
He explains that during the aircraft’s takeoff, it appeared to operate normally until reaching around 625 feet altitude, after which both engines suddenly lost power. This, he speculates, could be due to either fuel starvation caused by a blocked or manually shut-off fuel supply valve, or contaminants clogging the fuel flow.
He explains that although the fuel gauges might have shown adequate fuel levels, if the main supply was obstructed, the engines would stop after using up whatever fuel was already in the lines.
He reiterates that such a simultaneous engine shutdown in a modern aircraft is extremely rare and can only be definitively explained once the black box data is analyzed.
The above points points are simply the speculation and now that the black box has been recovered, all eyes are on the reports of the investigation which may give a clear picture as to what happened.
What is inside the Black Box and why it is even more important in Air India Plane Crash?
The Air India crash is the rarest of rare cases where both the engines appears to have lost its thrust immediately after being airborne. The aviation experts are not able to pin point the cause of crash and therefore information from Black Box is even more important in Air India Plane Crash than for any other plane crash that has ever happened.
A black box in aviation refers to two recording devices. The Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR).
The FDR records critical technical data from the aircraft systems like Altitude, airspeed, vertical acceleration, Engine power, throttle position, fuel flow, Heading, attitude, flight control inputs, Landing gear and flap positions, Autopilot settings.
But the CVR records even more vital thing which is the audio from the cockpit. And the audio usually contains
- Pilot and co-pilot conversations
- Radio communications with ATC
- Alarms, engine noises, switches, and ambient cockpit sounds
