The New York Times The video shows that the landing gear remained extended throughout the plane’s ascent and descent, which experts described as unusual. Landing gear creates drag, so retracting it is typically one of the first actions a plane’s pilots take after the plane is off the ground. Source: Newsflare, via Associated Press The New York Times But experts said the pilots may not have retracted the gear for a number of reasons. A mechanical problem may have prevented the pilots from lifting the landing gear, for example. Or the pilots may have been preoccupied with another, more pressing problem.“The airplane will climb fine leaving the gear down,” said Shawn Pruchnicki, a former accident investigator at the Air Line Pilots Association and an assistant professor of aviation safety at Ohio State University. If something else had gone wrong in the plane, the pilots may have focused on addressing that first, he said: “You have bells and alarms going off — there’s all kinds of stuff happening.”Were there engine problems?Engines provide thrust and investigators will want to know if they failed for any reason. An engine breakdown sometimes comes with telltale signs — smoke, fire, a flash — but experts said none of those are clearly apparent in the blurry videos of the crash.One video shows what appears to be a dust cloud shortly after the plane leaves the ground. That could have been caused by an engine or it could have been caused by the wingtips disturbing the air, experts said. Source: Reuters The New York Times Planes are designed to fly with just one engine, a situation that commercial airline pilots train for “excessively,” Mr. Pruchnicki said, adding that he believed the 787 Dreamliner probably didn’t experience a single engine failure, but both engines could have malfunctioned.If that were the case, it would have happened at the “absolute worst time,” said Mr. Pruchnicki. A double engine failure occurring shortly after takeoff, when the plane was only several hundred feet off the ground, would have left the pilots without sufficient time to respond to the emergency.“You can’t manage a double engine failure that close to the ground,” he said, recalling the 2009 “Miracle on the Hudson,” when a US Airways jetliner landed in the Hudson River after the aircraft lost power in both engines after striking a flock of birds. “These guys were in a residential area, a business area. They had no place to go either. There was no field to set it down gently. So, unfortunately, they ended up in buildings.”A failure of both engines could have many causes: a bird or drone strike, inadvertent fuel shut-off, issues with automated thrust management. There is no evidence that these problems played a role in Thursday’s crash.“There’s easily a hundred different explanations of possibilities,” Mr. Pruchnicki said. Analyzing the flight data recorder and inspecting the engine itself would provide an "unbelievably forensic" look at what happened, he added.What was happening in the flight deck?Investigators will also probably be sharply focused on what unfolded in the flight deck, or cockpit, before the crash.There were two pilots on the Air India flight, which is typical in commercial aviation, with one pilot in charge of flying and the other providing support, monitoring the plane’s various systems. Were those duties split appropriately? What were the pilots saying to one another? And did they perform their jobs adequately?Planes are also equipped with various warning systems to alert pilots of problems. Investigators will want to know if those warning systems worked as intended.“Did they get the warning that they were supposed to receive or were they misconfigured? If they didn’t get a warning, then why? If they did, what did the crew do when they heard it?” said Mr. Guzzetti.What other sources of evidence are there?Investigators will also be on the hunt for more evidence.Typically, they scour and analyze wreckage for clues and collect testimony from witnesses, such as airport personnel who may have seen the crash. They will also look for additional videos.But their most important task will be recovering the wealth of technical information and audio recordings contained in the plane’s black boxes: a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder.“Once they have that information, it will help focus the investigation into specific areas,” said John Cox, a former airline pilot and chief executive of Safety Operating Systems, a consulting firm. “So right now, it’s about gathering of documentation and evidence and keeping an open mind.” , In the blue skies above western India, flight AI171 was struggling to gain altitude. The London-bound plane had barely left the runway at Ahmedabad airport on Thursday before it was careening, Air India Flight 171 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Ahmedabad Airport in the city of Ahmedabad, state of Gujarat, India, to London Gatwick Airport, United Kingdom, that crashed 36 seconds after takeoff on 12 June 2025..