Mysterious sound before the crash – sabotage investigated

Air India

Mysterious sound before the crash – sabotage investigated

Johan Edgar

Publicerad 00.09

The plane crash that killed 260 people seconds after takeoff is still a mystery.

Sounds captured on a video clip may help answer the riddle.

At the same time, it is now confirmed that sabotage is being investigated as a possible theory.

Air India flight 171 took off from Ahmedabad airport at 1:39 p.m.

– When the plane takes off, it looks quite normal at first, says former pilot John Cox to The New York Times.

Seconds later, disaster strikes.

The desperate distress call

The flight captain Sumeet Sabharwal, 55, makes a desperate distress call to the control tower: “No thrust, mayday, mayday.”

The Boeing plane with 242 on board crashes straight into the medical students' lunchroom just kilometers from the airport. One passenger miraculously survives. 19 people on the ground die. In total, the accident claims 260 lives.

 

One of the 242 on board miraculously survived. Now sabotage is being investigated. Photo: Mohan Nakum/AP

17 days after the crash, the incident is still a mystery.

- The Swedish Accident Investigation Board has launched a full investigation. It is examining all possibilities, including sabotage, says Murlidhar Mohol, the minister responsible for civil aviation, according to The Sun.

Confirms the sabotage theory

The newspaper states that sabotage has previously been mentioned as a possible cause, but that this is the first time the authorities have confirmed that it is an aspect being investigated.

The New York Times has, based on footage from surveillance cameras that captured the crash on film, had experts analyze both the image and sound.

 

The plane's star fin is visible stuck in a building. Photo: Ajit Solanki/AP

There is strong evidence that both engines were shut down at the same time shortly after the plane took off.

Such a catastrophic situation is incredibly rare. According to experts, it is "one in a billion", writes The Sun.

Initially, it was speculated that the pilots may have missed important points in the checklist in connection with the take-off.

 

Firefighters work at the scene of the crash. Photo: Ajit Solanki/AP

The shadow shows

Among other things, the landing gear was not retracted and experts said that they may also have failed to set the wing flaps, which give the plane an increase in lift during take-off, in the correct position.

But the analysis of the footage shows that the pilot tried to fold the landing gear, but that it was stuck in the half-folded position. A shadow along the wing on the surveillance film also shows that the wing flaps were folded.

Everything indicates that most of the flight seemed normal as it traveled along the runway and during the first seconds in the air. And then the engines seem to have completely shut down.

Another piece of the puzzle in this is the mysterious sound heard in the film when the plane loses ground in the air.

 

Parts of the aircraft are on top of a building. Photo: Rafiq Maqbool / AP

Emergency turbine running

If the electronics, hydraulics or engines are knocked out on a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, the emergency turbine located under the fuselage automatically starts.

It rotates with the help of the speed wind and does not generate enough power to keep all the functions of the aircraft running, but can help land a plane in an emergency.

On three occasions when fuel ran out on board a passenger plane, it is the emergency turbine that probably saved all hundreds on board.

According to a sound expert who analyzed the sound heard on the Air India plane and compared it to the sound when a Dreamliner lands with the emergency turbine activated, the sounds match more than 97 percent, writes The New York Times.

 

Most of the flight seemed normal as the plane traveled along the runway and during the first seconds in the air. Photo: Ajit Solanki/AP

Did not turn

Another detail in the film that points to both engines being turned off is the plane's movements in the air, experts tell the newspaper.

Generally, when an airplane loses power in one of its engines, it yaws to one side before the plane's computers straighten it out. But before the crash, there was no such yaw.

- You don't see any indication of asymmetric thrust. You don't see any yaw, you don't see any rudder deflection, you don't see any smoke or puffs from either engine, former accident investigator Jeff Guzzetti told The New York Times.

- All of this together tells me that there was a symmetrical loss of power.

 

Both engines were basically out at the same time. The probability of this happening is one in a billion, according to experts speaking in The Sun. Photo: Rafiq Maqbool / AP

Contaminated fuel

The newspaper writes that this indicates that the catastrophic events behind both engines being knocked out probably occurred at essentially the same moment.

The theory that has now been mainly put forward is contamination of the fuel. This is also how it is suspected that a possible sabotage occurred.

– As soon as the report comes in, we can determine whether it was an engine problem, something with the fuel or why both engines stopped working, says Murlidhar Mohol according to The Sun.