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Let's speak now to Gideon Ewers, who's a pilot and an aviation consultant
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Good afternoon to you, Gideon. Hello, how are you? I'm well, thank you. I mean, it's incredibly tragic
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It's so shocking because these things, because of social media, you get to see the kind of aftermath of this so quickly, so soon
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perhaps sooner than some of the relatives. And I think that's quite a shocking kind of modern development
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But in terms of what you have seen, what are your initial thoughts
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Well, of course, the critical thing, and it runs counter to every kind of emotional, indeed, news gathering instinct
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which is to try and think about what caused such a tragic event to happen
0:48
But of course, aviation accidents are very complex things. And that's why it's so important to have those investigations, which are independent, technically led to determine what happened and more importantly, why it happened to to prevent any kind of recurrence
1:07
Obviously, like everyone, I've seen the video footage of the last moments of the flight and looked at it and questions have popped into my mind
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I also have spoken with a friend of mine who's actually a 787 instructor pilot and has his thoughts on it
1:27
And we've developed some theories. But even though those are educated theories they just theories Of course What can you tell us then about the plane itself and its safety record And then perhaps we can get into the airline as well Yeah well I mean the 787 series is
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I mean, this is the first airborne or accident hull loss. There was one other hull loss
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but that was due to a ground fire incident. The aircraft wasn't in flight. It was a battery
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overheat and the aircraft was on the ground. But that was a hull loss. This is the first
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in-flight hull loss of a type that has been a very successful product, not only for Boeing
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but for airlines who operate it. You know, Boeing, when they designed the aircraft
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they had a very successful aircraft called the 767, the 300 series of that especially
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What they set out to do was design an aircraft that could do everything a 67300 could do
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but do it better and they succeeded in that with the 87 so it is remarkable that i mean obviously
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nothing is 100 safe nothing is 100 uh guaranteed but it is remarkable that such a modern aircraft
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uh would come to grief in this sort of manner how old is this particular model i think i said
2:57
the 787 and then there was an 8 at the end of it. Presumably that's
3:01
the series that it was. Well, it's a subdivision. It's the 787 comes in in three models
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really. The Dash 8, the Dash 9, Dash 10 and they're optimised
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towards different missions. So the Dash 8 is the shortest of the three The 9 has a slightly longer fuselage a bit more fuel has longer range more payload And then the 10 is the higher payload shorter range variant
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And airlines can acquire the models as fits their route structure. But, of course, the flight decks, the procedures stay broadly the same
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So cruise flying one can fly the other without two. There are one or two little variants to do with on the Dash 9 on the flap settings
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There are a few more flap setting detents compared with the Dash 8
3:55
But they're a very minor, minor detail separation. Now, Gideon, I understand you did say at the beginning that, you know, that you might have some theories
4:05
but that you wouldn't necessarily want to share them. And I do understand that because there's nothing worse
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and after a tragic accident like that, you know, the airwaves are full of people speculating
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But, you know, you know what you're talking about. Do you have any initial thoughts about what might have happened here
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I, yeah, as you say, I'm incredibly reluctant to advance the theory
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But, you know, I do think some of the ideas that have been circulating may not be correct
4:39
I'm not totally buying into the flap setting question. There are so many protections
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You have all sorts of alerts and warnings. If, for example, the aircraft's not configured for takeoff
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if you selected a particular flap setting and the flaps haven moved into that position there is an alert The leading edge devices on the 787 have a system called auto gapping where if the aircraft approaching its wing stall angle the maximum angle of attack the slats extend without crew intervention to energize the top of the wing airflow and increase the lift
5:23
So there are a whole bunch of questions I have about that
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And in our discussions, my friend and I had to circle back to the way the mode control panel may or may not have been set up
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The mode control panel is on the top of the glare shield, and it's the primary interface between the crew and the aircraft
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you know you're putting inputs like altitude settings air speeds navigation rather heading or following following the inputs in the flight controls
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control computers so it could be a misset there that could happen there are some airlines that
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have and I don't know whether Air India is one of them where there is a procedure where
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the altitude setting on approach coincides with the high altitude above sea level
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of the touchdown point on the runway that you're landing on. And if that wasn't reset, you could see how the aircraft might think it's being told to do one thing
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being told to do another. There are a myriad of things. Okay. Gideon, thank you for your initial thoughts
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That's Gideon Ewers, who's a pilot and aviation consultant here
