A Vietnam Airlines Boeing 787 had an accident today while taking off on a long haul flight from Germany to Vietnam. Fortunately no one appears to have been injured, but I can’t even begin to wrap my head around how something like this could happen… [...]
This discussion thread is connected to our post: Vietnam Airlines Boeing 787 Suffers Botched Takeoff In Munich: Runway Overrun, Tail Strike, Shredded Tires.
Indeed, it looks like wrong input for take off unless something seriously wrong with the engines which are unlikely in my opinion considering it flew to MUC fine and not just after a maintenance.
Giant orange man stowed away in the catering - weighed the plane down!
Could it be wrong flap setting? In any case, Vietnam is an enemy country that still embraces Communism. They should pay reparations to the United States.
That's a great take!
That said, let's withhold judgment until Alert chimes in about it as well. I suspect he'll suggest that the plane was overladen with girl food, and that a 50% reduction in global airline activity will solve the problem.
Even just watching the first video with the timing, the plane is already well into its takeoff roll at the start, and it doesn't even start to rotate until the :42 mark. Personally, I've never been on a flight where the takeoff run was >50 seconds, but that's just my experience and and is not, clearly, science.
Either way, that's one helluva' long takeoff run, and it's a huge relief that this didn't end catastrophically.
The most important question however is whether they served lunch considering the flight duration of over two hours 😛
very glad there are cameras everywhere and spotters around the world that catch stuff like this.
the flight recorders most certainly were pulled and German/European investigators will know very quickly what went wrong.
Ben is correct that they should have rotated long before they finally realized they were at the end of a very long runway and caused a tail strike trying to finally get the plane into the air.
The tire problems were undoubtedly because of hitting objects on the ground.
You're obviously not a pilot. You can't rotate early if you don't have sufficient speed for your weight and flap setting! Which they obviously didn't!
First impression is incorrect data in the box - wrong takeoff weight or bad assumed temp are the two most-likely culprits that would produce too low of a takeoff power setting, resulting in the overrun.
Why the pilots didn't catch it can come down to experience (true at ANY airline, in ANY country). Vietnam airlines has been flying the 787 since 2015 so they have lots of time with it, but every pilot has a period where a plane is new to them. You might have plenty of training, but you can have very little experience. If you're only on your 10th takeoff ever instead of your 100th, it's harder to instinctively recognize that "something's not right" when the performance calculations return a derated takeoff setting of 85% when it should have been 92%.
This wasn't an overloaded cargo flight from a sketchy fly-by-night operator with 40-year-old planes. My money's on inaccurate performance data sent to the pilots (wrong zero fuel weight) or inaccurate performance data entered by the pilots (zero fuel weight entered as the takeoff weight, and/or wrong assumed temp for the derated thrust setting).
accurate statements but when you are on a 13K foot runway and you are halfway down and aren't close to being able to rotate esp. in a modern, well powered jet like a 787, something is wrong and the takeoff should have been aborted.
how many widebody aborts have you done?
Please, Tim - I'm 100% confident the only time you've spent in a widebody is watching a movie in business class. How many aborts have I done in any widebody? Or any turbine powered aircraft, for that matter? Lost count. I do them multiple times in the sim each recurrent training cycle. Simulated bird strikes, engine surges, wind shear, cargo/engine fires, engine failures, gear collapses, runway incursions, and on and on and on. I've done all these and more in the sim literally more times than I can count. I'm betting you've done zero, and never had to actually sit in the seat, with contradictory information staring you in the face, and with literally seconds to figure out what is really happening and how to appropriately react.
Any study of accident and incident history produces NUMEROUS examples of crews doing inexplicable things because of incorrect settings and a misunderstanding of what the automation is telling you, vs. what makes sense. You can't substitute training for experience at any airline in any country, and inexperience continues to produce examples.
The Emirates 777 takeoff in December of 2021 immediately comes to mind. The altitude selector was set to "0000" at setup, the F/O reported setting it to "4000" (initial climb clearance altitude) - but both pilots missed that the Flight Director mode remained in Altitude Hold (captured from the original "0000" feet setting). They took off, but the First Officer started following flight director commands (which was trying to return the plane back down to 0000' altitude, because it was still in Alt Hold), and instead of climbing out normally, only entered a shallow climb of 800' fpm max, and only cleared a residential area just off the airport by less than 200 feet. All because the pilot was following the (incorrectly programmed and set) automation guidance, instead of realizing "this doesn't feel right" and setting the pitch at 10 to 15 degrees for a normal climb.
So, yeah, Tim - it happens. More than you'd guess. Yes, of course, the takeoff should have been aborted. But the more we train pilots to just "trust the automation" the more we will see incidents like this one.
When I learned to fly decades ago, we were always taught to "trust but verify". You crosschecked your instruments ALWAYS to be sure what you were being told by one makes sense. I don't see that being emphasized in the industry as much anymore, and this incident is often the result.
I'll wait for any final reports to come out before 100% passing judgement on what happened here, but "incorrectly entered data" is still the most likely culprit.
of course sHIT happens. that's why pilots working for top notch carriers go to the simulator and recurrent; I presume that includes you.
Cameras are everywhere now.
and you know that one of the greatest challenges in high tech aircraft is inputting wrong data and not questioning if something doesn't look right in reality. when you are 8K feet down a 13K foot runway in a new technology aircraft like a 789 you should be in the air or well into the rotation.
of course we should wait for final reports but cockpit recorders provide so much data that it won't take time to figure out what happened w/ a pretty high degree of certainty.
btw, I have a lot of respect for seasoned pilots. I have a lot less for anyone that tries to blindly copy failed arguments from those that are trying desperately to refuse to admit that another airline does something, in fact a whole lot of things, better than "yours"
Play YOUR part and we'll get along just fine.
Tiny Hands Timmy, let the aviation professionals do the real work and analysis, unlike past-their-prime failed keyboard jockeys such as yourself.
"Tiny Hands Timmy, let the aviation professionals do the real work and analysis..."
"I'lL LeT tHe DaTa sPeAk FoR iTsElF bEcAuSe I aM daTa PeOpLe AnD I kNoW eVeRyThIng So I dOn'T hAvE tO lEaRn AnYtHiNg!!!!!1!!!!!!!!"
-T. Dunn, Soon
He WILL need to get the last word on this thread, just like every other thread that threatens him with knowledge he doesn't possess.
yep, I will.
So WTH did you think you would succeed at your comment?
If Paul is truly an Air Transport pilot in the US, he is a professional
you and your ilk are just paid internet rabblerousers that are consistently wrong in your support for UA.
Paul's only mistake was blindly copying the non-sense posted from your buds.
My first off the cuff guess is they forgot the flaps until halfway down the runway…. then they realized,..
but I can’t imagine a 787 is not set up to alert you in such cases…?
My impeccably informed, super deep technical insight leads me to conclude that a B789 decided to do a A343 impression for its Insta account and got distracted and ran out of runway.
I'm also seeing a report of punctures in both the vertical and horizontal stabilizers. I'm not enough of an avgeek to have any idea what could have caused something like that.
https://www.threads.com/share/BBelZgsPh7/
If the tires shredded when they overran, then a piece of one could have been flung up and caused damage.
Anyone else surprised that the flight (to nowhere) lasted that long?
If in the first few minutes of a take off there’s a tail strike, is it common to have pursued the original flight trajectory for that long?
Possible I’m missing something!
Look at the map in the article, the flight didn't follow the original trajectory at all but rather spent entire time in holding patterns around Munich in order to dump fuel. Additionally, when the emergency isn't urgent in terms of affecting the plane's ability to fly, it is a good practice for pilots to take time to analyse the situation and prepare and brief the emergency landing. And finally, as far as I understood, they also done a low pass (or two?) above MUC before actual landing for the ground personnel to observe and relay the state of the aircraft.
Another scheme by communist countries to make a fool of the US. They would never do that to an Airbus. US should ban Vietnam Air from flying Beoings going forward.
787 dreamliner is a problematic airliner it had initial lithium battery troubles. every airline who had bought this 787 had problems
airindia flight 171 crash is an "unsolved" mystery
it is due to sabotage done by some one to the hydraulic system
which disabled the aircraft from climbing up and loss of
fuel supply to the engines. a similar sabotage was done by
a maintenance man in the engineering hangar night shift
that aircraft was supposed to go to new delhi from bombay
next morning and pick up the former prime minister
india gandhi to singapore that flight was cancelled due to
damage. then the p m office and civil aviation minister
asked the former managing director/CEO of airindia
mr k g appuswamy who was a licensed 747 engineer
to visit the hanger and submit a report. he gave clear
report that it was a sabotage to the hydraulic system
hence the plane cannot climb up. I am aware of it well
that might be a tad much but UA did have to send a recent 787 back to Boeing.
AA has had similar major problems w/ their recent 787 deliveries.
Very similar to what happened to Emirates EK407 in 2009. The wrong weight was entered, and the A340 only just managed to lift off but, still had runway lights puncture the skin of the aircraft. Then obviously returned to MEL for major work.
Normal acceleration but at 138kn brakes at the back, left side probably kicked in.
Paid for whole runway; use whole runway.
Feel that way every time I fly.
LOL!! That's fantastic!
The video with the inside view on the right hand side of the aircraft is so scary. You can see the grass and that the plane has not yet taken off.