A flight bound for London met with tragedy shortly after takeoff this morning, carrying 242 passengers, 53 of whom were UK nationals. The aircraft came down in a residential area near Ahmedabad airport in India, erupting into flames upon impact as captured by harrowing footage shared on social media.
The controlled descent of the plane has sparked widespread speculation about the cause of the crash. Aviation enthusiast Jerry Dyer from Big Jet TV, who often records aircraft movements around the UK, analysed the footage and shared his insights with the Daily Express: “As soon as I saw it I recognised the flap settings straight away, that is the moving part of the wing that extends at the back.
“From that video it seems that they were not extended and that means you do not have enough lift because the flaps increase the size of the wing and give the plane more lift. Without them you will not have any lift. It will take off but do so shallowly and lose altitude and ultimately crash.
“That is something that the pilot controls. The pilot inputs the setting before takeoff. My biggest concern is I am sure that the systems on these aircraft are sophisticated so the system should shout back at the pilot if wrong.
“As soon as they applied throttle to takeoff, they would have had a warning I would imagine. There would have been fail safe measures in place to configure.
“Whether it was a malfunction or human error we don’t know. It is not something that you can see as a pilot, you wouldn’t know. It comes up on the screen on the flightdeck but who is to know that it showed the flaps were extended but they weren’t?”.
The mystery behind the fatal crash continues to deepen as rescue personnel tirelessly search for any possible survivors and brace for an exhaustive probe into the tragedy. Jerry observed that aircraft are extremely vulnerable during takeoff owing to their heavy load at this critical moment.
He continued: “You have to remember the plane is very heavy at the point it crashes. It is flying from India to London so it has a full fuel tank and is full of passengers.
“From the pitch angle it looks like it is trying to land and that is the standard angle of attack when landing an aircraft but they would have had no opportunity even with engine full power to correct it if the flaps weren’t extended, the aircraft would not respond without the flap setting being correct.”
You can follow our live updates on the Air India crash here.
