While the causes of the A1-171 flight crash in Ahmedabad are being investigated and information from the flight data and cockpit voice-recorder was awaited, aviation experts theorise — judging from videos of the plane’s short flight — that overloading, a potential bird hit and the rare instance of both engines failing could have prevented the air-plane from getting sufficient ‘lift’ to ascend.
The 787-Dreamliner has maximum take-off weight of 227.9 tonnes and a fuel capacity of 126,206 litres. The twin engines are equipped, even under the worst scenario, to operate for up to 330 minutes on a single engine. “The odds of both engines failing simultaneously during take-off are quite small or about one in a billion,” Abhay Pashilkar, Director, CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), which designs civilian planes, told The Hindu.
