This aircraft has got airborne well within the requirements of FAR 25 under which it was certified. It has over 1250m ahead of it passing around 35' based on the video from behind, so the FMC data was not incorrect, the thrust up until after TO was not incorrect, and the CG is not out of range, the time to rotate is within expected range, and the attitude at liftoff is not excessive, the plane is not heavier than expected. This is not Emirates, Tiger or SQ, it may have a resemblance to AFR out of Nigeria, or ANZ out of Raro, or UAL out of Hilo. Unlikely but there are similarities.

A low altitude in the MCP can become pretty interesting, as will a TAT probe failure to the ATR thrust limit. Both cases will have the thrust levers moving back rapidly. There is no obvious failure of the engines at this point save the question that the RAT may be deployed. A transient electrical fault tripping the logic for the RAT is hard to imagine, but that would possibly end up with an ATR fault and power coming back to idle. Fuel contamination is not impossible, but it is improbable, the engines would have been on their TO configuration from the engine start, and the taxi and turnaround takes enough time to flush the fuel lines, being longer than the selected tank sampling time that sits behind the SOPs. Boeing aircraft are easier for the crew to detect anomalous thrust commands compared to the Airbus, however, if the RAT is out... then more was happening.

The flaps are in the correct position, we are looking at a time critical failure for the crew, they appear to have around 10 seconds between onset and impact, and they have rotated the aircraft in the later stages, as any reasonable pilot would do, and that certainly does not indicate a crew initiated problem on the available information. Unlawful interference is unlikely, given the RT calls that have been made.

The IDGA AAIB is not known for rapid response, this event is of international importance, it appears that it is being treated as such by the authorities involved. The EAFRs on the 787 will tell all soon, and we need that information, this is a globally important aircraft type.



It said on the TV that people.from.the UK AAIB are going out to help

I read that the 'AAIB' will be investigating. I presume that's AAIB (India)? Do we know what facilities the AAIB (India) has for reading FDRs?

reported were India AAIB with support from NTSB, earlier report was about UK AAIB ref the 50 plus UK passengers, other report mentioned Boeing and GE supporting.

from the EASA statement yesterday :
​​​​​​​No mention of UK

The point you think you are making here has recurred throughout the thread. To try and put it to rest:

The first omission/error here is in describing a definite article (i.e. the video), alongside claiming that the pic you posted is 'unprocessed". It might not be processed, it just isn't very good quality. Which you might not realise if you haven't seen the original, higher resolution version of the clip.

The are now numerous social media sources for copies of the flyby/crash smartphone video. Many of them are actually a repost (or possibly multiple independently made iterations) of a second generation recording - made via a smartphone filming the original video playing on a monitor and via the monitor's (likely very poor) speakers. This version has been incorrectly assumed to be (and described as derived from) "CCTV" in some posts. The "screen recorded" nature of this particular version of the video is obvious from the camera movement (including showing the bezel and edge of the screen it is filming), moire patterns etc. The original (or rather, what *appears* to be a first generation, but compressed, copy of the original) version of the video has *also* been posted on social media (and thereafter, here) with both then being dissemanated across multiple social media accounts and at varying video resolution and compression ratios.

There are further posts of the "screen recorded" copy of the video in which AI enhancement and other filters have been used to try and "improve" the video quality. Anyone even attempting to filter the video in that way doesn't understand the way such filters operate (i.e. they are trying to make the picture "more watchable" rather than sharpen it/make it more *accurate*), and anyone trying to draw conclusions from such "enhanced" versions needs to think carefully about what they are looking at.

The framegrab you have posted above is clearly from the "screen recorded" video. The original version (with its attendant much higher video *and* audio quality) *does* appear to show an object beneath the airframe where the RAT hub would be - and also - albeit only for a handful of frames - appears to show the motion blurred impeller disc. The fact that this artifact is only visible for a few frames is explicable via the heavily compressed digital video but it is consistent.

The "full" video itself is also longer than the "screen recorded" version and starts earlier in the incident timeline. And a distinctive propeller-type beat *is* audible, both before *and* after the aircraft comes into frame, at near identical pitch to the various examples we've seen of a 787 passing a camera with the turbine deployed. One would imagine that the first generation copy of the video as it exists on the device that recorded it is noticeably better quality than *any* of the downsampled/overcompressed social media versions we have seen. And one also sincerely hopes that the Indian AAIB are already in possession of it.

The prevalence of smartphones and social media means this sort of footage is more immediately accessible and more easily dissemanated than at any time in the past. However, anyone trying to draw solid conclusions from a clip posted on social media - especiallly with limited quality, and even more, "enhancement", needs to remember the limitations of what they're seeing.

(Not a pilot, but a former aero electronics engineer with significant subsequent digital forensic experience)

The investigation is being led by the AAIB of India, not Boeing or US regulators. While the investigators will be mindful of a wide range of industry-related issues, I doubt they have any concern for what may or may not be 'consequrences to the USA's national security'. If there is any politics involved in obfuscating and delaying the investigation, they'll be Indian politics surely?

This is assuming too much. There are legal and technical reasons why the CVR may not have been downloaded yet or, if it has, why no information has been released.

In an ICAO Annex 13 investigation, interested states and experts are invited to participate. In this investigation, investigators from the US and UK are participating (there may be others as well), and experts from Boeing (and possibly component manufacturers) have also been invited. The lead investigators will often hold off on recovering data from the CVR and FDR, or examining the data, until there's agreement between the interested parties on how to go about doing it. With the distances involved, travel logistics could easily delay examining the data by a couple of days.

In some cases, the board leading the investigation doesn't have the internal expertise to recover data from the CVR and FDR. In these cases, agreement needs to be reached on which technical experts are going to take the lead on recovery. I don't know if the Indian AAIB has internal expertise or if they need to find external expertise to recover the data.

In some cases the CVR and FDR can be damaged and technical experts need time to come up with a plan to repair the recorders and recover the data.

Annex 13, Article 5.12 prohibits the release of CVRs and analysis/opinions from FDRs, unless the investigators decide that the benefits of the disclosure would outweigh the adverse impact that release would have on future investigations. This rule exists to encourage full cooperation in investigations from participants in the industry, including pilots and operators. India's accident investigation rules are consistent with Annex 13: see section 17 of the Aircraft Investigation of Accidents and Incidents Rules, 2017. So even if the CVR and FDR have been analyzed, it may well be that information isn't being disclosed to the public because they haven't reached any definitive conclusions yet that they're confident will end up in the final report.

What you are saying is, as several have said before, is that everything started to fail at or shortly before rotation. Joining the dots from two other branches in this thread is it correct to say that there are only two things that happen at that point: the aircraft transitions from "ground" to "air" (multiple sensors) and there is a change in orientation such that any liquid (eg potable water) that has found its way into the EE bay will move. Question: the aircraft was routed DEL-AMD-LGW. Where was the potable water tankage topped up? Presumably prior to the longest sector? In addition to the inspection list that the Indian AAIB has mandated should they also inspect peer aircraft for EE bay corrosion...?

My expectation is that at the very least the AAIB (India) would want to open / read in the presence of the AAIB (UK) and the manufacturer. They might even want to read it at a location with specialist equipment (NTSB in Washington, BEA in France, AAIB in UK). None of this would be unprecedented when looking at previous accident investigations particularly for those that took place in developing countries.

Quick example, EK 521 accident in DXB:

Pakistan A320 accident Karachi:

(1st June was 10 days after the accident).

Agreed.
Also, I expect the airport would've sent a car out to check the runway for evidence. Since we agree that the engine failure occurred near rotation, and that rotation occured well inside the runway ( see e.g. fdr here , or the granular ADS-B data), that car would've encountered a bloody mess, and we'd all know about it by now.

The problem with these reports is that the Indian AAIB and DGCA websites ( aaib.gov.in www.dgca.gov.in ) are mute on the subject of this crash, so even the DGCA inspection mandate quoted above is shakily sourced. On Friday, AvHerald had already updated with "On Jun 13th 2025 the DGCA reported, that initial preliminary findings rule out a bird strike as no bird carcasses have been found." I searched for a source for this, and found an "exclusive" which read, "The initial probe report of the Ahmedabad Air India crash, accessed by CNN-News18, reveals key findings from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation\x92s assessment led by the director of security." Other media simply quoted News18. There are two reasons to be skeptical here:
\x95 first, we have seen fake reports circulating;
\x95 secondly, News18 rates badly on mediabiasfactcheck.com: "Launched in 2005, CNN-News18 (formerly CNN-IBN) is an English-language Indian news television channel based in India. We also rate them Questionable based on a poor fact-checking record with numerous false claims."
That leads me to consider that this "exclusive" might be sloppy reporting based on a fake\x97I have no way to know whether it is legitimate or not.

At this point, I feel we can only rely on information being official if it's published through an official website, or if there's independent reporting or a video clip from an official press briefing.

I do believe the accident was not caused by an animal strike, for many reasons.
But I wouldn't believe it based on unsourced reporting alone.

1. We can't afford him, even if we could do that.
2. Attempting to enforce a writing style isn't going to work.

I was offered a link to an official report (allegedly by the AAIB in India) this morning from a retired pilot friend: he said it was dated 15 June 2025.
I checked the official site and found nothing. I went to his link and got a 404 result.
Even professionals (he's only been retired a couple of years) can be taken in by the avalanche of "information" running around.

The Indian AAIB successfully downloaded both FDR and CVR data from an Air India 787's EAFR relating to an incident in 2018, so your misgivings on that account are unfounded.

And they do have a new lab, as of this past April:

AAIB sets up flight recorders laboratory

More at linked site. The lab opening is also featured in the slide show on the top page of the AAIB website, following a series of slides for International Yoga Day.

I have no misgivings, I\x92m just challenging the assertion that because the recorders have been found, they have already been read. There\x92s any number of reasons why they may not have been read yet, in India or anywhere else.

Could the fellow who was cited as having heard the CVR and commended the pilot's actions.... because he trained under the Captain, and would be familiar with his speech, have been bought in to validate who was speaking on the transcript?

Given the number of times I reviewed DFDR data supplied by an operator after some sort of event/incident, I think most major operators have access to the equipment needed to download a healthy data recorder. So I'd be a bit surprised if Air India does not have this capability. OldnGrounded has also posted that the Indian AAIB also has that ability.

Usually when I hear of data recorders going back to the US NTSB or the recorder manufacturer, it's because the crash damage is such that specialized equipment is needed to download the data. The recorder in the tail would likely have little damage.
While the AAIB may have held off on downloading the recorders until all the major players are present, it's been several days - I'd expect everyone who matters is already there. So I think it is reasonable to believe that the investigators have done a download and have had at least a preliminary look at the data. If there is a smoking gun, they probably already know (and the longer we don't hear something regarding the rest of the 787 fleet, or at least the GEnx powered fleet, the less likely it is that they suspect a systemic problem with the aircraft and/or engine). However the proviso that I posted earlier about potential data loss/corruption due to a sudden shutdown still applies - so maybe the data simply isn't on the recorder.

As has already been posted, EMI is highly unlikely - the current cert requirements for HIRF are quite high, and due to the composite airframe construction of the 787, the lighting requirements are much higher than for conventional aluminum aircraft (the higher resistance of the composite airframe results is higher lightning induced currents).

FDR has suggested a large slug of water hitting critical aircraft electronics at rotation - it is possible that resultant electrical short circuits could falsely signal the engines that the switches are in cutoff. Highly unlikely that it would do that to both engines, but possible.
Then again, all the other plausible explanations are highly unlikely, so...

BTW, I do have a life outside PPRuNe - and I'm going to be traveling the next several days, with limited to non-existent internet access. So don't be surprised if I'm not responding posts or PMs.

Boeing will safeguard Boeing's interests, the NTSB will safeguard American interests. If the Indian AAIB start dragging their feet over publishing their initial report in an effort to protect Indian interests then Boeing and the NTSB will make a joint press release to the effect that the aircraft was serviceable right up to the point of impact. They have done it before.

An interesting statement.

Does the statement imply that something noted on the crashed aircraft was not present on the remaining aircraft.

If the investigative team are aware of what happened, are they also aware of why it happened. As noted elsewhere - surely far too soon to be certain. If they are not aware of the why or how, how can they be certain there are no safety deficiencies.

Similarily, aircraft and maintainence comply with existing standards. It may well have been the case that existing standards were applied to the crashed aircraft. Does the statement imply that there was nothing wrong with either the Boeing aircraft or the Air India standards. What about the GE engines, are they considered part of the description of both aircraft and standards.

Or was the entire exercise merely a PR wash which achieved nothing other than optics that 787s and Air India are safe because standards are being maintained and aeroplanes have no issues.

I'm tempted to read nothing into the statement because it came from the DGCA rather than the AAIB of India.

It was surely a worthwhile exercise, whatever the outcome. It hasn\x92t come up trumps but it was at least possible that inspecting the other aircraft might have thrown up a clue to the crash.

It would be interesting to know whether the crashed aircraft was used for parts around the Covid slowdown and whether this was exceptional or whether other inspected aircraft were similarly treated.