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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1244 thread views

Transnational Thursday for June 12, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Boeing just doesn't seem to be able to catch a break.

There is a tragic crash in India with one of their 787-8. And it is nightmarish - full plane, full of fuel, just after take off crashes in residential area. There seems to be survivors which is miracle in itself.

An Air India passenger plane bound for London Gatwick crashed shortly after taking off in Ahmedabad on Thursday, leaving at least 204 people dead.

The flight was carrying 242 passengers and crew when it was involved in what the airline has called a "tragic accident" in the city in western India.

Ahmedabad's police chief told the BBC that 204 bodies had been recovered, while 41 people were being treated for injuries.

He earlier told news agencies there appeared to be no survivors from the crash, and that some local people would also have died given where the plane came down.

Details are still emerging from the scene. Here is what we know so far.

As always for plane crashes pprune is the source for latest news, speculations, bickering, wild theories

https://www.pprune.org/accidents-close-calls/666472-plane-crash-near-ahmedabad-7.html

There's some videos here and here (cw: deadly plane crash).

Too grainy to completely exclude takeoff misconfiguration (esp on a sleek design like the 787), but at least no obvious structural failure, and I'd be surprised if takeoff misconfiguration could get that high in those weather conditions with that passenger load. NTSB's going to do some tests for fuel contamination, pilot error, maintenance faults, so on, but at the risk of speculating too early a lot of what I'm seeing points to either dual mechanical failure of the engines or electrical failure of the whole aircraft, especially the reported RAT deployment is real. Given everything else a lot of people are predisposed to think software or major design failure, but it's hard to think of a software bug or hardware flaw that would hide for over a decade and then hit both engines simultaneously. Maybe flying into a flock of birds a la Sully, but without the river and miracle?

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