I don’t see how flaps are an issue here. The plane appears to have taken off normally and then suddenly started to descend, along with a “mayday” call. This is not consistent with pilots having “forgotten” to extend flaps.
One of the other points random YouTubers made is the trajectory (straight down the line of the runway) makes a single engine failure (via bird strike is obvious cause) unlikely, as that would have led to yaw in one direction.
Simultaneous Bird strikes are a thing though that does happen. Though we have video (again very grainy low res video) and it doesn’t show that.
If that situation occurred I’d have have expected it to be obvious in the video - and clear in the black box that records stuff like thrust. “Lost power to port engine. Mayday!” on a take-off. Losing power to both engines about simultaneously I am surprised there was even time to call a “Mayday” and what could they have done anyways? (rhetorical till we know more)
ISTM (and I am NO expert…just a WAG) that there are not a lot of options for what we see.
The plane gets off the ground. It seems it took a lot of runway to do it but it did and seemed ok for a few seconds. Then it stalls. Why?
- Flaps are not right and/or retracted too soon. (And I think the plane will set off alarm bells if flaps are not set right prior to takeoff…hard to miss.)
- Both engines lose power at the same time (I believe the plane can takeoff with only one engine).
What else is there? A pilot intentionally crashed the plane? Does not look like that.
It can likely stay in the air, yet that would still be an emergency situation (certainly on takeoff). Incorrect flap positions are generally a problem on landing (too fast, stalling, etc..) so again, gotta see what the boxes say. From the videos I saw, I did not see a flock of birds or flaps that (to a novice) like me seem incorrect.
Looks like the start of an aerodynamic stall.
It doesn’t seem like that to me (again as very non expert). It seems like it never got enough upward velocity not that it suddenly lost speed.
The speculation I had heard is that to the pilot the lack of velocity from not extending the flaps could have been mistaken for engine failure momentarily at least, which is all the time they had (except the whole “alarm literally screaming at you the flaps weren’t down” thing)
IANAPilot:
I thought pilot-101 for stall recovery is to put the nose down.
I get these pilots had precious little altitude to trade for energy but it seems there was nothing really tall they needed to clear. So, put the nose down to at least level flight. If both engines were out then probably no hope. But the nose-up thing doesn’t seem right unless there is panic in the cockpit (which there may be…I’d be scared…easy for me to second guess from the comfort of my home and not close to a crash and imminent death).
Not surprised as the ‘rule’ / saying is Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. IOW, fly first & only when the plane is stable (or as stable as you can get it) talk on the radio.
There is a lot of data recorded & some places have very low bandwidth, ie. over the middle of the ocean.
Why don’t they make the whole plane out of the same material that they make the black boxes from? 
He and Chesley Sullenberger were two of a kind. I wonder if they ever met. (Oh, there are enthusiasts of all kinds!)
Some years later, Haynes’ daughter needed an experimental medical treatment that her insurance wouldn’t cover and was no longer experimental enough to be paid for with research dollars. The Flight 232 Association, made up of people on that plane and their survivors, raised the money and she recovered as much as was possible.
I know “Sully” is still with us.
In a stall your control surfaces don’t work. If the stick shaker gives you warning you might have a chance to get the nose down but, indications are both engines suddenly died (RAT was deployed) when in early ascent phase (high angle of attack) so maybe no chance to get the nose down.
Some info I’ve picked up so far:
It seems fairly conclusive that the RAT was deployed. You can hear it in this video and see a hint of it in some stills. Compare to the sound of the RAT in this video.
The top images below are from the accident aircraft and the bottom is of another with the RAT deployed.
It also appears that the flaps are deployed. It’s most clearly seen at the front of the wings where the slats are deployed. The B787 has a fairly clean wing and the flaps aren’t particularly obvious in a low resolution video.
The presence of the RAT pretty much rules out scenarios such as incorrect flap settings, inadvertent flap retraction, and incorrect thrust or weight inputs for the take-off.
So the sole survivor says immediately after the crash he got up and ran. Others say he was then found wandering. But then the police reported he was found “in” seat 11A?
Just have to wait for the truth to filter down from the chaos of “first to press” reporting. It’s easy to see how a police report of finding a passenger who had been seated in 11A could morph into them being found in 11A.
In other nonfatal news today, a JetBlue plane landing at Logan airport in Boston swerved off the runway and ended up in the bordering grass. Nobody was hurt.
Things like this happen semi-regularly. When I was on flightradar24.com, the Albuquerque flight had the most hits at the time, which was how I knew about it.
I really hope the man can get some serious counseling. It’d be bad enough to be the sole survivor of 240, plus the others on the ground. And I hope that those students and staff get what they need too. But I feel like it’d be bad enough with a bunch of strangers and even worse if you survived and your family didn’t, which is what I have seen reported that he had a brother on the flight.
This is from one of the survivors of UA flight 232 (who I know personally). She talks a little about survivor guilt. It’s a 3-minute listen, or there’s a transcript if you prefer.
Separate from this StoryCorps episode, she also told me she never takes her shoes off in flight since then. She thinks having her shoes on so she could start running as soon as she came to saved her life.
No it doesn’t. The plane can lose lift from incorrect flap settings and also have loss of power as another event.
Yes but it makes it unlikely. The chances of there being some kind of flap setting error as well as an unrelated total loss of power are very low and probably aren’t worth considering when the flight profile can be fully explained by the loss of power alone.