Were_Flaps_Of_Air_India_Dreamliner_Retracted_During_Take_Off__What_New_Video_Shows(720p)
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00:00The experts we've been speaking to, each and every one of them, passenger jet pilots, including at least three 787 Dreamliner pilots, have all talked about the various complexities that will have to be gone into by the crash probe.
00:13But just by virtue of those two videos that we have seen of that horrific crash of Flight 171, they point to the flaps.
00:22Now, the flaps are these components of the wing structure that you see here.
00:27And if you've ever been on a passenger jet and sat on a window seat near the wing, you've probably noticed these parts of those wings actually extend and bend down.
00:39And what they do when they do that is provide much more surface area to the wing at a particular angle, therefore providing more surface area to lift the plane up.
00:52Because you've got the wind hitting the flaps and it allows the pilots to get the plane to climb, you know, much more efficiently.
00:59So, this is a standard configuration takeoff of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
01:06This is a Boeing photograph and I've pointed to the flaps.
01:09Now, this image, this still image is from that second video that we've seen.
01:13And every pilot I've spoken to says this looks like a clean configuration, which means the flaps that you see in that first picture are actually retracted here, which means the aircraft's wing is not in the takeoff configuration.
01:29And what that implies is this aircraft did not have the requisite wing configuration with the flaps extended in order to generate the kind of lift needed to, you know, put the aircraft in a steady climb.
01:43And that perhaps explains why just a few seconds after taking off, it became very apparent that there was something catastrophically wrong.
01:51The aircraft, instead of climbing, which it would have done if the flaps were extended, and we don't know the reason just yet, seems to plateau, it flattens out, it levels out, and then, you know, simply flies into the ground across just about 32 seconds after taking off.
02:09Now, obviously, the crash probe is going to go into why this configuration, you know, happened in this manner, because these were very, very qualified pilots.
02:18What went catastrophically wrong, the entire sequence of events has been captured on video, and therefore, that will be a starting point, perhaps, over what happened to Flight 171, but the flaps will be key to that investigation.