Why Air India Flight 171 Crashed - 242 On Board - Boeing 787

video that was fed in minutes after this

crash shows that this plane went down in

a fairly populated area not far from the

airport in northwest uh India. And as

you look at the video here, you're

saying to yourself, well, how much do

they do they know about what happened?

Well, it only got to 621 625 ft in the

air before it plunged uh out of the sky.

Terrible. There were 242 people on

board. It crashed shortly after takeoff.

Now, the focus is going to be, okay, did

anybody survive? And if there's no

survivors, the recovery of victims.

That's the focus right now and will be

likely for the next 24 hours or so. The

NTSB and the FAA are likely to help with

the investigation. Here's how it goes.

When there is a crash in a country, that

country leads the investigation, but

almost always they will ask the FAA or

the NTSB to assist with the

investigation. NTSB would be the lead

investigator there. The FAA would

provide technical expertise. In terms of

the Dreamliner, despite the problems

when it was initially launched, and we

covered those extensively back in that

2006 to 2011 time period, despite those

problems since then, the Dreamliner has

had a pretty good track record. In fact,

it this is the first crash involving a

Dreamliner. Boeing is in the process of

increasing its production of the

Dreamliner from four per month up to

five per month. Take a look at shares of

Boeing over the last year. It is also

expected within the next couple of

months to ask the FAA for an increase in

737 Max production. We'll see if this

investigation uh influences that

decision by the FAA. And then finally,

take a look at shares of General

Electric, GE Aerospace, I should say.

The Gen X engine has a strong

reliability record and when you talk

with people within the indust Okay, I'm

gonna jump in on this. So, let's talk

about this. Here's the thing. Jet

engines are ridiculously

reliable. Insanely reliable. It's one of

the reasons that I like having two of

them on my plane. Yep. Here's the plane

model again. So, let's just understand

jet engine for a moment. And why was the

ram air turbine allegedly It's It's a

little hard to tell from the video

deployed. And what what the heck even is

that? Uh so first of all, jet engines

compared to propeller planes, if you fly

something like a regular piston engine

plane, you typically have an engine

failure every about 3600 hours, which

most people aren't going to fly 3600

hours, but it's it it the statistical

rate is usually one engine failure in

3600 hours, whether it's a small Cessna

or a Cirrus or or whatever, right? Uh so

single engine prop plane, one every 3600

hours. for a for a turbine engine, a jet

engine, the failure rate for one of them

is typically a 100x

fewer failure rates. So, you're looking

at about one failure every over 330,000

hours. When you then combine a second

engine into the statistics, the odds of

uh really a dual engine failure are

frankly extremely extremely low. It can

happen. Uh there was an aviation

accident a few years ago where there was

a dual engine failure where it looked

like potentially still waiting on the

final NTSB report on it. Uh I think it

was in Florida where potentially uh the

pilots inadvertently reached over and

and shut off both engines manually. So

even in engine failure crashes on jet

engines uh it's it's so uncommon to see

both of them fail that uh that often

people look for some form of crew error

uh in the process. Now, I want to we'll

we'll look at the video uh in just a

moment here of the actual oopsy dupsies,

which is terrible. But it's also worth

remembering that this is this is the

first time that a Boeing Dreamliner, a

7878

uh has had this form of an accident. Uh

and it it's it's terrible. Here's the

Wall Street Journal edit together of

the clips. Take a look at this.

[Music]

Apparently, it crashed uh at about six

just over 600 ft in altitude, lost lift,

and began descending. As you could

clearly see in the video, it crashed

into uh a like a medical school. Uh and

so it's likely that some individuals on

the ground died as well. I did see uh a

note uh from uh uh the Reuters Newswire

that potentially they have one survivor

from the flight and potentially one

more. So possibly up to two survivors

from the flight, which is quite frankly

very very remarkable. But there are a

few things going on here that are

somewhat concerning. First of all, this

is a hot day. Uh so let's pull up the

temperature quickly. But uh we're not at

a very high altitude. Uh this airport

where they took off uh in India is about

192 ft uh off the ground. So we're not

at like you know an Aspen takeoff where

we're at an extremely high density

altitude in terms of actual altitude.

The problem is the temperature right now

uh is you know your average temperature

in June is a high of 101.

Uh and your weather right now I believe

is also 101. Let me see. Uh let's grab

weather 99° at the moment. Uh and then

of course uh it is uh you know we're in

the later hours of the day uh now in

India. So we're looking at uh earlier

today we had temperatures in excess of

100 to 102°. This is going to limit some

of the performance of a Boeing 787. 282

passengers. You're also knocking on, you

know, a relatively loaded well-loadaded

plane. So, you've got a heavy plane. Uh

you've got potentially a full fuel plane

here as we're we're making our way to

London uh was the destination for this.

So, 7878

max takeoff weights usually around

560,000 lb. They operate empty at about

285,000 lb and uh they generally fill up

with fuel of about 223,000 lb. Uh with

200 passengers, you know, assuming some

luggage at 200 person 200 lb per person,

maybe 225, you're you're easily adding

about 50,000 lbs of of payload here. So

you're pretty dang close to your max

takeoff weight. We're not going to have

I mean, you know, flight manifests will

show us the exact weight calculations

and performance takeoff calculations

here, but one of the things to remember

in this this aircraft is

you've got a heavy plane taking off on a

hot day. It's already hard to get lift.

So, you're up against challenges which

would require you to generally have

flaps deployed and the gear up as soon

as possible. In this clip right here, it

looks like we have a few problems. The

gear is down. Big problem. The flaps are

up. That's a

very likely a problem at this point. I

mean, they could have just removed them

when they got to 600 ft, but usually

you're going to put the flaps up at

1,000 ft. We'll talk about that in just

a moment. Uh, and then some folks are

pointing out that the RAM air turbine

may have been deployed. Now, the ram air

turbine could be deployed for two

different reasons. Engine failure or an

electrical failure.

Talk about that in just a moment. First,

I I I want to tell you what I know about

flying a smaller plane, significantly

smaller plane. But when I take off uh on

a smaller plane, we actually have uh

video of it, so I'll I'll just I'll pull

up a video of it. When I take off on a

smaller plane, they're very very

different uh from taking off like a jet.

A jet is very different from taking off

on uh in a prop plane. When I used to

learn a multi-engine on um prop planes,

we actually surprisingly

there was at least from the trainers

that I learned from and I didn't spend a

lot of time in multi-engine propanes,

but there was quite a bit of a lag time

in

how quickly you would pull up your gear

in a jet. almost the second you get a

positive rate of climb, which is

typically when you feel like you're at

about 50 feet, gear up, it's almost the

first thing you want to do in a jet. Uh

in my training, in jet training, the I

was blown away because I remember in my

training that remember I still

relatively newer pilot, but I actually

think that provides a new perspective

because it kind of gives you some

insight into, you know, what's it like

in training, right? In training, I

remember just regularly getting yelled

at like, "Gear up. Gear up. Let's go.

Get the gear up." And I was like, "Oh my

gosh, I gotta get the gear up so

freaking fast." Like, I feel like I'm

still on the ground and they're yelling

at me to get the gear up. Uh, and so I

think it gives an interesting

perspective.

Here's an example. Twitter in the

freaking video quality sometimes. You

ever notice that when you try to load a

video on Twitter or X? All right. So,

this is just an example of a jet

takeoff, and you can see how quickly we

go for the gear up. It's almost

immediately watch. I'll just play this

for you for a moment so you can see how

quickly we get the gear up. And then we

can compare that to what we see with a

Boeing that still has the gear down.

All right, go static here. Static

takeoff means I've got my feet on the

brake. Setting the power.

Full power set. Takeoff power set. Look

how long it takes to start moving.

70

alpha camera

take off right

positive right

that wasn't even that fast like the the

trainer that I learned with in Florida

would have probably wanted it even

faster than that but you see it's like

positive rate gear up it's it's the

first thing you're doing on these

So, you know, there's talk this that the

pilot flying this plane had, you know,

many thousands of hours of experience.

And so, seeing the Boeing with the gear

down at this moment is very odd because

it the gear is a substantial source of

drag. If I want to in training emergency

descend a jet. So let's say we have a

rapid depressurization

uh at 40,000 ft or whatever. One of the

emergency procedures is drop the gear.

Now you can only drop the gear on this

jet at 250 knots or below, but you drop

the gear because that gear slows you

down so fast. You could basically point

the plane down and and spiral down in an

emergency descent. And it helps you from

oversp speeding the airframe of the

aircraft because there the gear creates

so much drag. It also gives you some

more stability. It's like it's like a

boat kind of keel if you will. Uh but

the point is the gear creates a

ridiculous amount of drag. So for people

not in aviation, seeing the gear down

here is insane.

And I doubt any pilot would have

purposely left that gear down because it

is this is going to be a two pilot crew

and there's no way in hell they forgot

to put that gear up in my opinion. It's

it's so rare to not see the gear go up

because it is the very first thing you

do because it's so dang heavy. Now, does

it happen on goarounds like emergency

goarounds? Totally. But because the ram

air turbine was deployed as at least

what you're seeing some you know folks

talk about especially on like aviation

Reddit or whatever. Uh what you find uh

let's see here if I can find it again.

Yeah, here's the India flight. We we'll

I'll click around here. There's there's

a high-res video here somewhere of this

but people are talking about the ram air

turbine being deployed. Uh and yeah,

here it is. Edit two. You can actually

even see the ram air turbine spinning on

the video if you pause and zoom in at

the end. So, they uploaded an image

here. You see that here? It's very, very

grainy. It's hard for me to tell uh

exactly, you know, what's going on. It's

it's likely that's what's going on. That

could happen in a power failure. Now, in

a power failure, you could get the gear

down manually potentially and just drop

it down. Or in the Boeings, it's a

little harder. you know, they could take

a few minutes to sort of manually pump

it down. But if they had a power failure

on takeoff, it's possible they couldn't

get the gear up because a lot of the

hydraulic pumps that move the gear up in

aircraft and jet engines, even though

the engines might operate the hydraulic

pumps, the electronic, the hydraulic

pumps are electronically actuated. So,

it is possible that there was some kind

of catastrophic electrical failure here.

This is why a lot of people will say

things like, "Oh, Kevin, you know, AI is

going to replace pilots in the future."

I personally don't think so because if

you have an electrical failure, you need

somebody who could still fly the plane.

Unfortunately, this is probably the

worst condition to have an electrical

failure. Now, we don't know that's what

caused this this accident, but the

reason it's possible or or at least, you

know, something I am suspicious of is

because this aircraft has its gear down.

Its flap isn't set. Which then makes you

wonder, was there some kind of error

where they thought they had the flap set

and it wasn't actually set and the

electrical sensors weren't working? Why

was that failure not caught in their

takeoff configuration? You know, before

we go to takeoff, we press this little

button that says takeoff. Okay. Not

every aircraft has this. I I you know,

I'm used to the embryo air. Uh and if my

flap isn't set for takeoff, it won't

it'll say uh uh you know uh uh no

takeoff flaps is usually the error we

would get. Is it possible that there was

some kind of sensor failure? Maybe. But

if they were able to take off, did the

electrical failure happen after they

retracted the flaps? But why did they

retract the flaps this early? Because

you could see the plane struggling to

gain lift here. And really, you're

you're almost in a stall condition here.

Usually when we think of stall, we think

of plane nose down, but there's no lift

here. The plane's heavy. Uh it's ram air

turbines deployed which signifies either

electrical or engine failure. Uh we are

heavy, we're hot, were probably full of

fuel which is obviously terrible for the

you know the impact as well because it

just creates this disgusting you know

fireball of an explosion. But that's

just the way it is. The fuel is carried

in the wings and those are like the

first things that break off. So you know

the the the true answer here is we have

no freaking idea. But this is very odd

because this was, as far as we can tell,

a a straight out takeoff. Uh there had

to have been some kind of catastrophic

error here because it doesn't look like

Here's actually a little bit of a longer

clip. It does here. You could see

they're leveled out, almost leveled out.

So they've when this video starts, you

don't actually even see them climbing

much at all. They fail to climb as soon

as they're at, you know, 500 ft or so,

which is devastating. The most dangerous

portions of aviation, takeoff and

landing. And this is the first 787

crash. And once again, it's Boeing,

which what makes me most concerned about

Boeing is I think we touched on it, but

just in case we didn't, President

Trump's justice department has agreed to

let Boeing out of a criminal trial and

guilty pa surrounding two 737 Max 8

crashes. That's different from the 787

Dreamlininer. Uh the DOJ in a court

filing Friday said it had struck an

agreement in principle for Boeing to

avoid prosecution, meaning it won't have

to go to trial next month and can avoid

being branded a corporate felon. Why

were they going to trial anyway? Boeing

had previously reached a criminal guilty

plea in 2024 under the Biden DOJ

admitting that its workers conspired to

defraud aviation regulators before the

crashes that killed 346 people in 2018

and 2019. And that had to do with the uh

the trim override uh for the pitch

controls on on the aircraft. And the

training, at least from from my memory

on this, the training was very lax for

uh I think these were the Ethiopian

crashes uh for the pilots in how to

override a failure of the uh pitch

control which led to the rapid

oscillations and the eventual, you know,

stall and plummet out of the the sky for

these aircraft. Absolutely terrifying uh

crashes uh and terrible. And and now

there's talk, you know, as part of this

guilty plea that, you know, Boeing had

actually conspired against regulators.

And, you know, this this is why there's

so much concern around this whole like

anti-regulation movement because there's

a lot of talk around the Trump

administration looking for less

regulation. You know, it's what Elon's

been a proponent of as well. Uh, and

there's concern that could less

regulation contribute to things like

this, especially at companies like

Boeing. But here you get a little bit

more of a longer look into this just

lack

uh of of of lift essentially. Uh and

this pull up here is is almost just a

you know reaction in the moment of oh my

gosh we're going to hit something if we

don't pull up here. Uh, and you can just

see the plane sink, which is very very

common to sink like that when your gear

is down, es, you know, especially in in

a non-configured uh, setup because if

you have flaps deployed, you get more

lift. You know, when we come into land,

I usually land full flaps. I could land

flaps three or I could land flaps four,

you know, I'm generally full flaps

deployed unless I have an engine out,

then I'm then I'm flaps three. Uh, or if

I'm going, you know, super low IFR. Uh

but um

don't appear to be any flaps here. So

your your lift is miserable in a high

heat environment where your engine

performance is already bad. And if you

potentially are heavy and you had an

electrical failure that didn't let you

bring the gear up and you had a flap

failure, that could be what happened

here. Now it's speculation. Obviously,

we won't know until the NTSB is

involved. And it's absolutely terrible

uh to to see what happened here. But uh

there's a comment here that um uh many

medical students died too. Number

unconfirmed. Absolutely terrible. Boeing

whistleblower who committed suicide

warned of a lack of Q&A or quality

assurance on these 787s just two months

ago. Coincidence.

You know, there have been I mean

remember the guy uh the whistleblower

who got shot in the pickup truck sitting

in his pickup truck. Somebody just walks

up and shoots him.

You got to be careful talking bad about

Boeing.

you know, uh, terrible. Absolutely

terrible. Uh, somebody else is linking

the full clip here. Okay, we'll go ahead

and pull that up. Thank you, by the way,

for uh, provide. Can you provide some

positive stats on air travel? Kind of

scared to hop in a plane. You know, air

travel is safer than than vehicular uh,

driving, especially honestly commercial

aviation. Uh I

I think that uh if you are on a twin

turbine plane, so basically a two engine

jet plane, it is extremely rare to have

problems. These jet aircraft usually

climb like a bat out of hell. Uh you

know, heavy and hot problematic. Two

engines on a Boeing though, usually not

an issue at all. Uh so this is very

rare. the the engines that we actually

have on this puppy are uh oversized,

which is actually pretty common for a

business jet to oversize the engines. We

can climb very well on one engine. Kind

of crazy. Um, okay. So, let's look at

this. Somebody just sent me this new

footage. New CCTV footage. So, Air India

plane crash. Okay, let's see this. It's

It's really devastating to see this kind

of stuff. Okay, here we go. I had to

type it in and find it manually. Sorry.

Okay. So, here's the takeoff roll.

I mean, do I see flaps here?

I don't even It's hard to tell. I don't

even see I can't tell if we've got

because you you'd be somewhere between

10 to 30 typically on a 787 takeoff.

Now, in fairness, I've never flown a

787. Oh, wait. Am I not showing the

screen? Silly me. Sorry. Here we go.

Okay.

There we go.

Okay.

See the takeoff.

It's relatively nose high already in my

opinion. on a hot day like this. That's

quite a hell of a pitchback. Where's the

gear up, bro?

Yeah, I

The gear up right there or not moving at

all signifies a really really clear uh

uh

issue. I I

There's the impact.

Oh my gosh, that's terrible.

That's interesting. gear up. Honestly,

the gear should have been coming up by

here. You saw in the video that I played

by about right here, we were gear up.

And it doesn't look like the gears going

up at all. But why would if they had an

electrical failure by this point,

the takeoff should have been aborted.

So, something else that I didn't that I

didn't say that could add some

perspective here is

in my video you are going to hear me say

uh 70 check. Okay, so I say 70.

Uh my fo says check. Okay, this is

important.

70 check.

Okay, it's a cross check at 70 knots.

That is a decision moment. If I have any

problem before 70 knots, I pull the

throttle back and I I slam on the

brakes. I try to maintain that center

line and I'm going to get off the

runway. I'm going to abort the takeoff.

It's going to take me 20 minutes to take

off again because those brakes, those

ceramic brakes are going to have to cool

down cuz I'm going to be creating some

smoke.

So the 70 check is really important, but

it's an opportunity to abort the

takeoff.

If you have a problem between 70 in in

this jet, it's going to be a higher

speed obviously for the Boeing and V1.

You only abort for engine failure or

engine fire. So maybe they had an

electrical failure between

their version of 70, their cross check,

which could be at 80 or 90 for them,

right? And V1. That would explain why

that gear didn't go up, unless of course

they just forgot the gear. Again, I

think it's remarkable to forget the

gear.

Alpha

positive.

Look at that. I go positive rate gear

up. My alttimeter is not even at 100

feet yet. This uh elevate, this airport

is at 73 feet. So, I'm about 25 30 ft

off the ground and my gear's going up.

So, it's already driving in. Now, it

takes a moment for it to drive in

obviously, but it's useful to think

about that because we don't see that in

uh in in this shot. Uh let's pull it up

again here in

where did I just put it? Anyway, we

don't see that at all in

this Air India

takeoff which is quite concerning. I'll

show you another angle too but let's

play this one more time. Okay, so here

you go.

Okay, here comes V1.

This would be rotate. There you go. The

nose is up and liftoff.

Gear fully deployed the entire time. And

it's very hard to tell if the Rammer

turbine is out yet at this point.

Can't get lift.

It's so sad.

This is so sad. Hot day. So again,

performance problems, right? Not

uncommon. I want to show you uh another

angle of just sort of a normal

takeoff.

This is me flying out of Henderson and

my trainer uh who was in a prop plane

right behind me who trained me. I love

this guy. Chris Weey, all in aviation.

Like shout out to you guys. You guys are

amazing. Frankie, Dana, love y'all.

Jacob, great people. Okay. All in

aviation. Henderson. Great. Hashtag

notsponsored. But I did all my training

there in these serious aircraft. Uh and

so one of my trainers saw me going to

take off and uh you'll see, you know, in

our takeoff roll how quickly we go for

that gear. Although the clip ends pretty

much right when it starts, but there's

our takeoff roll and gear's already

going up. You see it kind of collapsing

in right there. There's only another

like second of the video there, but that

gear is already going up and we're what

20 ft off the ground. So, I can't stress

enough how important it is to get that

freaking gear up ASAP, ASAP, ASAP.

That's what I learned in my training.

That's what I learned. Uh that's what I

do in practice. And to see

this

not happening on this Boeing, I have I'm

I'm very hardressed to believe that the

pilots forgot the gear.

It like two pilots. It It just seems so

unlikely. And again, combined with the

ram or turbine, there had to have been

some kind of catastrophic electrical

failure. That's my opinion at this

point. Obviously, we'll find out more uh

as uh as we get more details. But um

uh yeah, somebody says, "Can we do a

clip of a Boeing takeoff?" Let's do

that. Uh and then we'll be done. Boeing

787 takeoff. You know, a Dreamliner

takeoff. Let's see how quickly they take

off. Extreme close-up takeoff at

Melbourne Airport. Sounds perfect. All

right, there's our takeoff roll.

Okay.

All right. There's the one. Let's see

how So, by 50 ft, you usually start

going in. And here it's activated

already. Do you see the doors open up

already? And they're going in.

So, it takes a moment, but those doors,

so in other words, they activated the

switch very quickly. Look right here.

See these doors right here? Look how

quickly they're activating the gear up.

It's a great suggestion, by the way, in

the comment, by the way. Thank you for

saying that. Look at this. They're

they're 10 feet off the ground. And

those gears start opening. The the gear

doors start opening up. Watch this. My

my gear doors stay open

there. See that? That's the pilot

activating gear up. So, literally

positive rate gear up. The very first

freaking thing they do.

And then obviously it it takes time for

the procedure to complete, but the

pilot's activation of gear up was

instantaneous. They're faster than me on

gear up.

Great suggestion in from the comments

here. Thank you. Thank you for saying

that. Uh so

it's it's very very sad. Very very sad.

Uh and

Maybe the gear of the plane was was

stuck. It's possible. Uh again, would

you get ram air turbine coming down?

Again, maybe the ram air turbine wasn't

down, right? But if the RAT was down,

you'll see that written as rat.

Then it was likely electrical related.

Uh and so even with the thrust of the

two engines uh in this heat at max load

you could have had trouble climbing.

Uh very sad. Usually by the way when we

have uh climb performance issues you

lower your your angle of attack

substantially.

So, when I go to climb uh out of a uh

hot airport like let's say uh Harry

Reid, I'm climbing at a substantially

lower pitch because I'm hot and heavy

potentially. This looks like a pretty

decent pitch. Honestly, you know, I

don't know that you need to climb at

that heavy of a pitch, especially if you

can't get the gear up.

So there could have been an issue here

where there was a little bit of panic

where you know the gear wasn't going up

and they decided uh or or and they

didn't level off a little bit earlier

[Music]

there. They tried to pitch down a little

bit. You can actually see them adjust

their pitch here. So the gear's still

out. I believe that's what I'm seeing

here. You could see the pitch angle

changes

right about there as they start pitching

the nose down a little bit. I think they

realize they pulled back a little too

much. The problem is now they're already

sinking. Sink rate.

It's It's devastating. I don't even want

to watch it again. It's It's so sad.

It's so sad. Uh but that's my breakdown.

That's my opinion. Why not advertise

these things that you told us here? I

feel like nobody else knows about this.

We'll we'll try a little advertising and

see how it goes. Congratulations, man.

You have done so much. People love you.

People look up to you. Kevin Praath

there, financial analyst and YouTuber,

Meet Kevin. Always great to get your

take.