Air India Express 737 Hits ILS, Damages Wall on Departure, Flies for 4 Hours

Just saw the pics of the damage on the twitter thread linked-to in the article. See below.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;shukla_tarun&#x2F;status&#x2F;1050595274869993474" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;shukla_tarun&#x2F;status&#x2F;1050595274869993474</a><p>Looks quite severe.<p>I&#x27;m impressed the plane flew for 3 hours without getting destablized and crashing....<p>Air India has the worst safety reputation in India, and several accidents &#x2F; incidents. I flew Spice Jet a few times over the last few weeks when I was there visiting. Spice Jet is like India&#x27;s Virgin America. Service was excellent and I did not experience any issues while flying.

I hate articles introducing three-letter-mysteries and leaving the readers in confusion. To add insult to injury, none of the comments seem to acknowledge that the topic is impentrable.<p>What is the mysterious ILS that was hit?<p>Even after reading the Wikipedia article, I only have a vague idea - seems to be a radar system, both on ground and in the air. Did the plane hit a radar tower?

I have been trying to go over how this could happen. The damage to the wall seems so severe that I would image even over the sound of the engine the pilot would hear and notice that they had hit a wall. Flying the plane at this point would be risking their life. The first thing that came to my mind was the only reason a pilot would risk his life is if his life was already at risk and if he had been drinking when he hit the wall he would face many year in jail I assume for putting lives at risk. In a panic says to himself the plane is damaged but I know it can still fly and takes off without a plan really but perhaps just to let the alcohol he had leave his system. I hate to speculate here on HN. This is just crazy to me and I really look forward to hearing more details as to how his happened.

Who wants to wager that the pilots did an aviation version of the five stages of grief, with some help from passenger &#x2F; flight attendant reports?<p>FO: Tower said we hit something, may have damage. Capt: Just close, we&#x27;ll be okay. FA: We heard a thump, and so did the passengers. CA: Just a noise, we&#x27;ll be okay. Dispatch on ACARS: You hit the localizer and wall past the far end, you morons. Descend, lower your cabin diff pressure, and GTF to Mumbai. CA: How do we explain this? FO: Ask the passengers for newspapes, we must find new jobs..

Unless I&#x27;m misinterpreting the satellite image its ~150m from the end of the runway to that wall[0] and it also looks a bit downhill from the runway to the wall[1].<p>I don&#x27;t see how this could happen without the pilots noticing; they would have been skimming the ground well past the end of the runway.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;place&#x2F;Tiruchirapalli+International+Airport+TRZ&#x2F;@10.7652872,78.705696,232m&#x2F;data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x3baa8b30609d9727:0xa2f4f10a6d8add6c!8m2!3d10.7603678!4d78.7088693" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;place&#x2F;Tiruchirapalli+Internation...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;shukla_tarun&#x2F;status&#x2F;1050581391828836352" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;shukla_tarun&#x2F;status&#x2F;1050581391828836352</a>

Question for professional pilots here: does this feel like normal behaviour for a pilot?<p>From my limited experience of pilots, this seems entirely unlike the kind of behaviour you&#x27;d expect - they&#x27;re usually conservative when it comes to safety or is that just the projected image to reassure the public?!

The AVherald article: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;avherald.com&#x2F;h?article=4bedd321&amp;opt=0" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;avherald.com&#x2F;h?article=4bedd321&amp;opt=0</a><p>As some of the others have mentioned, the reason the plane survived is likely because that was not a pressurised area. If it had breached the pressure vessel they would&#x27;ve noticed it very quickly (lack of pressurisation).

Impressive resilience by the airframe. Good job Boeing.

Lets hope they scrap that aircraft..<p>i could not find a reference but i remember an incident where an aircraft only scraped its backend on take off and repairs were made, but years later the aircraft was lost with everyone on board after cracks propagated up and around and the aircraft lost its whole tale section

Yet another reason not to fly Air India, just in case you needed another beyond price, on-time performance, service, and cleanliness.

It wouldn&#x27;t be the first time a crew errs in calculating their takeoff performance and uses too low a thrust or flap setting. Everyone on that plane is lucky to be alive, as others have died after similar takeoffs.

Can we take a moment and reflect on the fact that all of this data is freely available to anyone? I can sit in front of my computer, or anywhere with my phone, and follow planes around the world with an accuracy of a few meters, and replay the data at a later date.<p>The various flight trackers all use thousands of receivers around the world, and most of them probably use the same kind of SDR chip that was originally designed for USB TV and radio receivers.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;rtlsdr.org&#x2F;#history_and_discovery_of_rtlsdr" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;rtlsdr.org&#x2F;#history_and_discovery_of_rtlsdr</a>

If anything this is great free advertisement for Boeing&#x27;s quality.

The obvious mystery is why you would keep flying for so long after an incident like this...

I thought they track things like small vibrations in plane body due to such incidents. How would they detect Bird strike(<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bird_strike" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bird_strike</a>) if hitting wall go unnoticed? Don&#x27;t airports have sensors and cameras for such situations to alert Air traffic control immediately?

It wasn&#x27;t clear from the article. What kind of wall did they hit?

Honest question: why aren&#x27;t pilots forced to take alcohol tests before flights? There was some JetBlue incident about 10 years ago, IIRC.

Its mystery how plane survived such a huge impact<p>Airport perimeter damage: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;ANI&#x2F;status&#x2F;1050582092688629760" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;ANI&#x2F;status&#x2F;1050582092688629760</a>

A similar incident that happened with a bigger plane that completed a 13h flight: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;avherald.com&#x2F;h?article=48c78b3a" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;avherald.com&#x2F;h?article=48c78b3a</a>

It looks like the plane couldn&#x27;t properly take off(likely overloaded), and it&#x27;s not just an overrun. See the speed graph in the post, and the fact that the gears were retracted that low.

Why is there a brick wall so close to runaway?

Air India, an old antiquated government subsidized airline that should die.