The engines power the hydraulic actuators in an aircraft an aircraft of that size cannot be trivially controlled without that hydraulic system. The APU should have been started to provide backup power in the case of engine failure but during take-off there is already very little time to do anything and it's possible that the sudden workload overloaded both the pilot and copilot or some other human factors were involved.
That being said, in the video I saw, the aircraft was already going too slow to realistically recover. And all you would get at that point is just an extended duration of glide which at best would let you find a less populated area to crash into.
You can hear what sounds a lot like the very distinct sound of the RAT having been deployed in one of the videos. There is also no main turbine sound. This really seems like dual engine failure, for whatever reason.
I saw you mentioning this but the RAT on the 787 sticks out of the bottom and should have been visible at around :04 seconds into that video when the aircraft silhouette is visible clearly against the background.
Although it's possible I am just missing from the video. You are right that the sound is quite distinct and can be clearly heard in the video.
The RAT is surprising tiny on the 787, and this is a phone video of a monitor, then run through Reddit compression. I am of course not 100% sure about any of this.
Yeah I saw that picture and came back here. I think you are 100% right that the RAT is deployed.
From the video of the runway it also seems like the aircraft didn't do a short takeoff (ADS-B location data is always crappy on the ground in my experience so this is entirely unsurprising).
There was a "smoke cloud" from behind the left engine which could also have just been a dust cloud right after rotation.
The flaps allegedly could be at only 5° (which is why they're so hard to spot) because of the runway inclination.
Air conditioning is powered by bleed air from the engines (or the APU or a ground source). The APU wouldn't be running during any normal flight, it's normally only ever used on the ground when the engines are off and there's no external power source.
So I am not sure what you are trying to say here, sorry.
I don't really know enough about this, but what would you expect the pilots to do with that control if they don't have any thrust? Unless there was a suitable landing spot very, very close I don't see what they could do even if they have full control of the plane. There is nothing they can do except getting the engines to work to avoid a crash, the only thing controls would give them is the option to choose a slightly different place to crash.
But also how long after take off do you retract the flaps? Can it be a pilot error (took off without flaps?). It happened more than once in the past, though I thought a modern plane like the dreamliner would make that mistake nearly impossible.
