6 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

BBC One ‘Clock News reported that “flaps weren’t extended when they should have been” and “gear was down when it shouldn’t have been”.

The aircraft’s behaviour and the mayday call just doesn't match that being the issue at all though.

The aircraft apparently climbed to 600ft AGL, to climb at all it would require excess lift and excess thrust above that required to sustain level flight.

If there’s isn’t enough lift due to the flaps not being set , or too much drag from the wheels being left down the aircraft would not have climbed in the first place. It wouldn’t climb to 600ft and then suddenly give up.

At 600ft Either  A) the lift was reduced by retracting the flaps or B) the thrust was reduced or removed.

i don’t believe either of those things were done deliberately by the pilots so something else is at play here.

The fact the gear which is normally retracting by 50ft AGL remained down , and there was apparently a mayday call stating a loss of thrust all points to engine issues very close to the ground.

The correct response to the wrong or no flap setting or forgetting to retract the gear once airborne is simply to move the appropriate handle to the correct position, not declare a mayday and allow the plane to descend to the ground.

I don’t take any notice of the BBC for anything, least of all aviation.

There’s only really 3 things I can think of that will shut both engines down 1) severe damage 2) as @LRBS hints at, fuel contamination. Or 3) complete fuel starvation ,which is caused routinely on every flight by the selection of the fuel control switch to cut off which on this machine means via software.

Only the first of those 3 scenarios would tally up to the loud noise which was reportedly heard by the poor survivor.

30 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

BBC One ‘Clock News reported that “flaps weren’t extended when they should have been” and “gear was down when it shouldn’t have been”.

That was the news broadcast, nothing on the website yet.

I think it's well established that mainstream media is no longer an authoritative source for factual reporting.

There are Youtube channels that are far more professional, fact based and less speculative.

 

There is one video which IMO is quite telling. The one where you can - possibly - hear the RAT. It's awfully quiet otherwise. Even one engine at low power would be a lot louder...... gear and flaps be damned.

 

DB

4 minutes ago, DaviiB said:

I think it's well established that mainstream media is no longer an authoritative source for factual reporting.

There are Youtube channels that are far more professional, fact based and less speculative.

 

There is one video which IMO is quite telling. The one where you can - possibly - hear the RAT. It's awfully quiet otherwise. Even one engine at low power would be a lot louder...... gear and flaps be damned.

 

DB

I still have faith in the BBC on news reporting. Maybe because it’s always been my go-to in times of national tragedy or significant world events.

I trust some aviation experts on YT but as for news it’s BBC and ITV for me. Let’s see what BBC Verify report probably later today.

As an American Citizen, I get my news from the BBC!

From my experience most media exaggerate the situation - they have literally no understanding of how things work on a airplane yet they put out scenarios which they think could be potential cause of the accident. I take everything what media says with pinch of salt regarding aviation, by this point I am assuming investigators would have descended onto crash site and hopefully we should know more once black boxes are recovered. 

@jon b, having read your post I’m of the opinion the most likely scenario appears to be loss of engine power rather than incorrect flap settings as the aircraft wouldn’t have got airborne with the latter.

Having said that if it was full length then clearing an 11,500ft runway with little to spare suggests they used just enough power to get airborne and no more.

If the engines then lost power as seems likely the outcome was inevitable.

4 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@jon b, having read your post I’m of the opinion the most likely scenario appears to be loss of engine power rather than incorrect flap settings as the aircraft wouldn’t have got airborne with the latter.

Having said that if it was full length then clearing an 11,500ft runway with little to spare suggests they used just enough power to get airborne and no more.

If the engines then lost power as seems likely the outcome was inevitable.

Joining in on this train of speculation, I can agree. I think the most likely scenario we'll find is insufficient thrust throughout the entire departure, at least starting after v1 speed. The aircraft should have rotated many thousands of feet sooner than it did. The gear remaining down could be due to a lack of hydraulic power to raise them, rather than intentional or unintentional pilot action. It is absolutely possible to rotate and climb to VS₀ in 600 feet with glide power. The mayday call would back this guess.

If we're throwing our assumptions and guesses into a hat before the investigation even begins, my armchair shot in the dark is reduced engine power during the takeoff roll, after v1, that resulted in insufficient thrust to sustain flight. We'll see in 1-3 years if this was the case or not. 

25 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@jon b, having read your post I’m of the opinion the most likely scenario appears to be loss of engine power rather than incorrect flap settings as the aircraft wouldn’t have got airborne with the latter.

Having said that if it was full length then clearing an 11,500ft runway with little to spare suggests they used just enough power to get airborne and no more.

If the engines then lost power as seems likely the outcome was inevitable.

I don't think flaps are the problem in this situation - Even if pilots did attempt to take-off with flaps up, the take-off configuration warning should have alerted them plus I also understand that their electronic before take-off checklist would have been incomplete had they not selected take-off flaps which would have resulted in a amber master caution advisory I think at least. 

With regards to runway length - the another footage (I think airport CCTV perhaps) shows the aircraft taking off from at least more 2/3 of runway so it is likely they have used full length for departure. There are two turning pads available according to charts - one 1/4 down (from runway 23 threshold) and other at the end of runway itself. Even if they had used the earlier turning pad they still had around 2700m take-off run available. However it was a very hot day with light winds - 37C or even more so most likely they opted for full length departure (we won't know for sure whether they opted for full length departure or not but data from black boxes will confirm this). From pilots I have spoken to who fly 787 for real - 787 typically has higher take-off speeds and likes take-off with minimal power setting/flaps setting. So it is likely that pilots opted for de-rated thrust and used least flaps setting as recommended by their onboard performance tool, which is what speculated by some media of plane having no flaps set. Unfortunately when engines quit (if it was dual engine failure in first place) it is likely the that airplane didn't have enough excess thrust at that point to continue climbing and sustain lift. Mind you the plane just came down immediately afterwards which again supports the dual engine failure theory. 

Edited June 13, 2025Jun 13 by CAP1234

 

11 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Having said that if it was full length then clearing an 11,500ft runway with little to spare suggests they used just enough power to get airborne and no more.

Of course it’s worth noting that the aircraft would change its auto throttle and autopilot modes at 400ft AGL to thrust ref and VNAV speed. 

That 400ft AGL is conspicuous by being very close to the 625ft AGL quoted as the maximum height reached. Personally I don’t think it’s relevant, however it may be worth keeping at the back of our minds as more details come to light. The mayday call and the gear being left out all point to there being a known issue before the 400ft point.

9 minutes ago, WestAir said:

It is absolutely possible to rotate and climb to VS₀ in 600 feet with glide power. The mayday call would back this guess.

I don’t think there’s any chance of that happening in a heavily loaded 787, these things don’t go up very well at all with both engines running flat out. 
With a single engine failure on take off your looking at an initial climb rate at V2 to V2+15 of only about 500 FPM. It can be a painful wait in the simulator to get to 200ft to engage the autopilot with an engine out.

There’s no way you would have the energy to zoom climb up to 600ft with the engines not producing any thrust.

13 minutes ago, jon b said:

I don’t think there’s any chance of that happening in a heavily loaded 787, these things don’t go up very well at all with both engines running flat out. 
With a single engine failure on take off your looking at an initial climb rate at V2 to V2+15 of only about 500 FPM. It can be a painful wait in the simulator to get to 200ft to engage the autopilot with an engine out.

There’s no way you would have the energy to zoom climb up to 600ft with the engines not producing any thrust.

I am surprised by that. If these aircraft are designed to be able to climb out of trouble at take off with only one engine running, then I would expect there to be a significant excess of power with both engines operational, even at MTOW.

14 minutes ago, jon b said:

I don’t think there’s any chance of that happening in a heavily loaded 787, these things don’t go up very well at all with both engines running flat out. 
With a single engine failure on take off your looking at an initial climb rate at V2 to V2+15 of only about 500 FPM. It can be a painful wait in the simulator to get to 200ft to engage the autopilot with an engine out.

There’s no way you would have the energy to zoom climb up to 600ft with the engines not producing any thrust.

Yeah, I don't know why I wrote glide power. They were clearly producing thrust on rotation due to the displacement of the dust at the threshold end rotation. Just not enough to rotate where the performance charts surely would have had them rotating. 

I should have wrote reduced thrust.

49 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

 

I like this theory better than mine. Raising flaps instead of gear is about the same error that was made in that ATR crash where the training captain in the right seat feathered both engines instead of dropping flaps. The only problem is the crash photographs showing extended slats, and the top comment on this video that I have no way of verifying it's accuracy, but this is what was written:

"Hi I’m an ex 787 captain, in this phase of flight due to the flight envelope protection and auto gap protection, the system doesn’t allow you to retract flaps even accidentally ."

Edited June 13, 2025Jun 13 by WestAir

Different scenario, but was thinking of the BA 777 that lost both engines on final at Heathrow, and in a brilliant move they partially retracted the flaps, but of course left the gear down and basically just managed to clear the fence and put it down in the grass. If you're going down anyway, the gear would absorb some of the impact. But in this case they just didn't seem to have any options to find an open area.

Aside from birds, perhaps sucking in some sort of debris. 

Thinking of fuel contamination as a possibility as mentioned here, I was wondering about other flights getting fuel from the same source.