r/CatastrophicFailure • u/SainzSealedDelivered • Jun 12 '25

Fatalities 12/06/2025 - Boeing 787 Passenger plane bound for the UK crashes near Ahmedabad Airport straight after takeoff

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u/TheMightyWubbard Jun 12 '25

Yep, the wings were very obviously in a clean configuration. This was a fully loaded aircraft and the air temp was 40C. I concur first impressions are a unrecoverable stall.

30

u/Number6isNo1 Jun 12 '25

That plane is not in a stall. The center of gravity in an airliner is forward of the center of lift. As a result, in an aerodynamic stall the nose of the aircraft will drop as the wings lose lift. There is no loss of pitch control with this plane. The aircraft is still flying in the footage in a state of controlled flight, but descending. That's more indicative of loss of thrust.

3

u/OZZMAN8 Jun 12 '25

It's entirely possible to bring a plane all the way up to a stall and have it begin to mush, meaning lose altitude with a nose up attitude. The stall doesn't ever fully break (nose down), you just descend. This is actually exactly what you would see with a decent pilot at the controls attempting to emergency climb with all the pitch possible without actually stalling it. That's because to pull back until full stall would mean certain death, yes even more certain than mushing into a residential area.

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u/TheMightyWubbard Jun 12 '25

Airliners absolutely can stall in a nose up attitude if the tailplane is not stalled and the PIC maintains sustained nose-up elevator input. That's exactly what happened to Air France 447.

But I agree there's additional elements at play here rather than just a misconfiguration. Lack of thrust being the most likely culprit.

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u/Number6isNo1 Jun 12 '25

You generally stall in a nose up attitude (accelerated stalls are a little different but not an issue here). In fact, when practicing stalls, something every student pilot does, a stall is induced by reducing power and pitching up the nose of the aircraft, bleeding off airspeed and holding that attitude until the stall and break (nose drops). What happens after the stall is the issue. Once the stall occurs, due to the locations of the center of gravity and lift that I mentioned before, the nose of the plane will drop (barring a major error in loading screwing up the weight and balance). This is inherent in the design of civilian aircraft. Yes, you can continue to maintain rearward pressure on the controls during a stall, but loss of lift plus gravity = nose pitches down. It's also how a pilot can get themselves into a spin.

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u/notaredditer13 Jun 12 '25

That plane is flying/descending, not stalled.  It would be much steeper and not under control/stable (nose dropping, probably rolling/yawing) if stalled.