One of the pilots of Air India 171 seemed to suggest the aircraft was having engine issues in a frantic Mayday call as the Boeing 787-8 descended toward a medical school apartment building 20 seconds after taking off from Ahmedabad Airport Thursday. “Thrust not achieved … falling … Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” the pilot was recorded as saying in an exchange released on Sunday. The tower tape added fresh detail to the rampant speculation about the cause of the crash, which killed 241 of 242 people onboard the Dreamliner for the 10-hour flight to London’s Gatwick Airport. The lone survivor walked away from the crash mostly uninjured but remains in a local hospital.
The flight data recorder has been recovered from the aircraft but the cockpit voice recorder has not. Until the data is downloaded from those devices, speculation on the cause of the crash has centered on a poor quality cellphone video that some believe shows the flaps retracted. There are also those who believe the video shows the ram air turbine (RAT) deployed, indicating a loss of electrical power. The FDR, assuming the data is recoverable, will be able to confirm whether any of those conditions were present when the plane initially climbed to 400 feet AGL, pitched up and then lost altitude at a sink rate of about 475 feet per minute. In addition to the casualties on the plane, at least 29 people on the ground were also killed.
That might be because the US has a small population compared to the rest of the world and a whole lot fewer airplanes/airlines. The world does not end at the US border.