Posts by user "HumbleDeer" [Posts: 8 Total up-votes: 7 Pages: 1]

I recall the overhead lighting and the emergency nav aid strip lights are separate. The overheads would just go out during a power cut. On the other hand, I don't know whether the overhad lights would remain disabled in the event the power comes back. I assume they would, for the purpose of seeing where the F you're stumbling towards.

I also wouldn't exclude the very likely chance that the survivor didn't actually hear a bang, but just remembers a bang as a way of their brain framing that moment they suddenly felt a wave of anxiety or panic. It's like those tom drums they add in movies when tension rises. It's playing on the exact mechanism in the brain.

I actually like these two hypotheses; reasonable, and I can fit it with my understanding of how gasses do gas things.
On 1. -- Close to the ground, you have a little bit of additional upwards lift effect; ground proximity effect of some kind. That could account for why they were able to get off the ground at all, even in the scenario they didn't have enough thrust to sustain a climb. They would also not immediately lose all velocity -- it would take a couple seconds for the kinetic energy (velocity) to be converted into potential energy (energy stored/used to maintain the fight against gravity). This could account for the small delay before their kinetic energy (velocity) drained so much that they started stalling the wing. Your approach is a fair approach to a hypothesis to me!
On 2. -- I don't have personal experience with this given I don't fly winged bananas with engines, but I can imagine such a mistake quickly leading to a situation where six things come together to go wrong before you even have time to grasp what just happened.

The B787 is a way way different and much more complex and sophisticated plane than your Gulfie. The B787's two outermost (left & right) hydraulic systems are primarily driven by the engines, mechanically driving the hydraulic pumps. The center hydraulics are primarily electrically driven, and power the main flight controls, amongst other things like the gear. The left and right ones power the main flight controls as well, some of the less important flight control surfaces like spoilers and thrust reversers -- pardon me for not having the exact list of things. They also have a backup/supplementary electric pump each. Each of the two main engines has redundancy for the power plant a.k.a. VFSG (and motor-driven pump?) in its own right as well. All three hydraulic systems work together in a redundant fashion when it comes to the primary flight controls. The RAT can provide both electrical and mechanical sources of hydraulic support, if I'm not mistaken. The flight instrument and information systems can also be powered from two backup batteries, the APU power plant itself, and/or the RAT.

Right, that's because it's not not meant to be used during normal flight operations. Generally, usage of the RAT indicates #### has hit the fan(blades).

To corroborate this, one can note that the RAT cannot be stowed once it's deployed under these conditions. That's because the RAT is ultimately either deployed because it's "forced" out by an active signal, OR it's deployed because the electromagnetic system is de-energized and the spring loaded mount flaps it out. That's what happens when nothing is stopping the spring from doing spring action things, like you'd see when there's no power going to whatever usually holds it shut.

Considering everything that's possibly to be found in the vicinity of the plane in the picture, I don't think we can conclusively say that's the RAT deployed.

On the B787/B788, you'd be expected to run it because you need the electrical power to spool up at least one of the engines, after which the one running engine can provide power to start the one yet to be started engine.

Even my very experienced planespotter friends agree with me that it'd be very hard to notice from the ground even with bino's, let alone grainy footage. The B787/788's flaps are so well integrated you can hardly spot the difference if you're not sitting right next to them already.
Now I'm curious of the mechanical switchover mechanism that prevents backtracking of the flaps in the event the hydraulics fail and pressure drops which would slowly retract the flaps as hydraulic fluid drains from the pressure reservoir.

The pilot is dead, hence, we cannot ascertain that without the pilot having reported or spoken about it. If the CVR has no word on it, then anything the FDR shows in manouvring that suggests this, will forever be speculation.
That suggests to me myself, ethically, that we limit speculation on the intent of the pilots when it comes to things this ethically charged unless there's good evidence on the FDR. Rest in peace.