Air India flight to London crashes with 242 on board

[Jacson6]

A passenger plane en route to London has crashed on departure at an airport in India’s western city of Ahmedabad. The plane was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, according to Flightradar24.

A video shows that the flaps on the wings were not deployed.

[VMA131Marine]

1. Landing gear is still down

It’s not even retracting.

First guess is they retracted the flaps not the gear after takeoff. The 787 has triple redundant hydraulic systems driven by electric, not engine-driven, pumps so the gear should have been retracted at this point.

[Warpy]

2. With flaps not deployed and the plane not getting lift

raising the landing gear was not a priority. They'd have wanted it down had they been able to circle back to the strip and get that plane down safely.

This is just sad. I hope it's not a glitch that is likely to happen in other Dreamliners.

[VMA131Marine]

3. The crew didn't have time to think about circling back

There’s a video that shows most of the takeoff roll and it looks like the flaps were never configured. The aircraft used the entire 11,000 ft runway and started descending almost as soon as it was out of ground effect. The cause is almost certainly going to start with either improper flap configuration or inadvertent raising of the flaps. The question will be how the crew managed to ignore the audible warnings that should have prevented this. They would not be the first crew to takeoff without the correct flap setting.

[Warpy]

4. No, it was more like "we're not getting lift, MAYDAY"

and that was it.It doesn't look like anyone had time to be afaid. Or think about landing gear.