A pilot who regularly captained the same Air India Boeing 787 that crashed in Ahmedabad on Thursday, killing all but one of the 242 people on board, has theorized what could have caused the fatal incident.
Speaking to the Indian news service NDTV, Captain Rakesh Rai said that his analysis of the video footage of the plane during takeoff suggests something went wrong as the plane climbed to an altitude of 400 to 500 feet.
“Here, what you see is the undercarriage has not been retracted at all,” Rai said. “That raises a lot of questions.”
The crash, which killed 265 people as the plane crashed into a college hostel less than a minute after takeoff, is the worst commercial aviation disaster in over a decade.
While the captain noted that only “black box” flight data will definitively reveal what caused the incident, he has three theories as to what went wrong.
He suggests the pilots may have forgotten to retract the undercarriage, possibly distracted by a bird strike or a sudden loss of power, resulting in the plane being unable to gain altitude from the resulting drag.
“The gear-down is the biggest thing in this whole crash. The gear was down and that has most likely created most of the problem.”
An Australian pilot, also familiar with the aircraft, has similarly pointed to the extended undercarriage as the cause of the crash.
“At this early stage, I’m reluctant to label this accident ‘human error’,” the pilot wrote in an analysis.
Air crash investigations can take a long time and a preliminary report is not expected for three to six months, with a final report expected a year or two later.
Rai notes that Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, who died in the Ahmedabad crash, was a “very good friend” who he has flown with man times.
“Losing a close friend, losing a beautiful machine, and of course, losing so many passengers is very heart-breaking,” Rai said.
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