“Mayday… Mayday… Mayday… No power, no lift, unable to climb.” These were the last words of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal , at the controls of Air India flight AI 171, which took off from Ahmedabad and was headed for London Gatwick Airport but crashed on Friday 13 June in a residential area just seconds after take-off.

The aircraft, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner with registration VT-ANB, failed to gain altitude after leaving the ground.

The emergency message was issued at 1:39 p.m., one minute before takeoff. Sources consulted by the Air Live portal, which specializes in air traffic controller conversations, reported that the captain's message was brief, very brief: five seconds. When control responded to the emergency call, "there was no response," said Samir Kumar Sinha, a secretary to the aviation ministry.

The ongoing investigations will therefore have to establish the causes of the disaster. At the moment, what is known is that the investigators are focusing carefully on the flaps, the mobile part of the wings that helps the plane's lift, on the actions of the pilots and on the engines. And the engines were the focus of a briefing by the Indian authorities yesterday. As for the flaps, the images show them in a position deemed inadequate for the take-off phase : in fact, they have already retracted even though the landing gear is still down and above all a few seconds before take-off, compared to the ten minutes that the pilots explain they would usually have to wait.

Pilot Sumeet Sabharwal, 60, with nearly three decades of service and 8,200 hours of flying under his belt, was very experienced. He also served as an instructor for airline flights, with the responsibility of training younger colleagues. “A very reserved and disciplined person,” colleagues and friends described him as, he was just a few months away from retirement. The co-pilot, first officer Clive Kundar, had logged about 1,100 hours of flying and was certified to fly the Boeing 787 Dreamliner involved in the accident.

(Online Union)

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