From a reliable friend.
Bottom line: Minimum Equipment List item that had a problem, but the maintenance was repeatedly deferred. I would not have flown it with a MEL problem. And the FADEC should freeze at the current setting instead of idle.
From a retire aviation mechanic neighbor FYI
Flight: AI-171 | Aircraft: Boeing 787-8 | Date: June 15, 2025 | Route: Ahmedabad (VAAH) → London Heathrow (EGLL) Crash Site: ~1.2 km from VAAH Runway 23, post-V1 and rotation
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Primary Cause – Electrical Power Transfer Interruption (PTI) During Rotation • During transition from ground to airborne electrical configuration, the aircraft experienced a cascading dual-engine FADEC (Full Authority Digital Engine Control) failure. • Root cause: Uncommanded bus transfer failure due to arcing in the main power relay box (PRB-A), traced to water ingress during pre-flight GPU disconnection in heavy rain. • This led to loss of electronic engine control at rotation, resulting in both GEnx engines rolling back to ground idle within 4–5 seconds.
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Flight Data Record Timeline • +0:11 sec: Nose gear lifts off. • +0:13 sec: Sudden engine rollback begins. Thrust reduces from 92% N1 to <27% within 3 seconds.
• +0:16 sec: Master caution + ENG FAIL L/R warnings. FO calls, “Both engines dropping!”
• +0:20 sec: Autopilot and flight control reverts to Direct Mode. Pitch up attitude peaks at 18°.
• +0:25 sec: Aircraft stalls at 186 ft AGL. • +0:30 sec: Full aerodynamic stall; nose drops rapidly. • +0:38 sec: Ground impact at 54° nose-down attitude, 174 knots.
Contributing Factors • Environmental Conditions: • Torrential rain during pushback. • Moisture intrusion into PRB-A connector (P/N: HLN8471) — a known corrosion-risk component. • Latent Maintenance Issue: • Power transfer relay unit showed signs of thermal damage in a previous MEL deferral 2 weeks prior. • No replacement had been conducted; aircraft was cleared under repetitive deferral.
• Boeing 787 has no physical engine control backup (i.e., no direct mechanical linkage in FADEC loss scenario). • Loss of power supply to both EEC channels resulted in engine “freeze” at ground idle instead of flameout. • Flight Crew Response: • Attempted engine relight sequence not completed before stall onset. • Emerg
There is an AD on these aircraft about lavatory water lines that leak due to mis installed or faulty couplings. These leaks could leak water into the electronics bay and cause catastrophic failure. The AD was ffrom Feb. 2024 and updated a couple of days after this incident.
Thanks
so0 a lack of maintenance. this is what I think will be the problem with robotaxis and flying cars in the future...
Yep. My son just quit working for Traxxal.com because he was grossly overloaded with planes to manage. The limit is supposed to be 100 planes per manager. He was tasked with tracking maintenance on 187 planes. On top of that a new hire was assigned to my son for training. During their conversations my son found out this new hire was making $16K more a year than my son who is a retired Marine Gunny and ran maintenance control for a squadron of Super Cobra attack helicopters. He worked for Traxxall for over 10 years. He also found out Traxall is hiring new college graduates in the Philippines that know nothing about airplanes or tracking maintenance on airplanes. If you know anyone who is looking for maintenance on their aircraft to be managed for them make sure the stay far away from Traxxall.
Sounds familiar, my company is hiring high-school students with mechanical aptitude. They don't know how to use a screwdriver. I'm not kidding...
Then your company is on a fast track to failure. You can tell your company "leaders" a Top Gun aviator Navy Chief with 22 years of military service as a P3 Orion Flight Engineer that logged over 10K flight hours said that too.
I See, maintenance negligence as airline grabs cash at the cost of life. Fuck em, really hard.
Thanks for sharing