Heathrow

[Sl4yer]

The AAIB initial report is here for anybody interested. Of course it's easy to read too much into it, as the BBC et al will shortly demonstrate.

James

[Nigel H-J]

I suppose the one main reason for no fatalities or serious injuries must have been through the fact that the gear was down and took most of the shock on impact with the ground, had the gear been up then it would almost have been catastrophic.

Thank goodness they do impact tests on undercarriages.

Nigel.

[Scorpius]

As usual this has become a feeding frenzy by the media. They really should not ask journalists to speculate on the cause particularly when (as is the norm) they haven't a clue but like to use dramatic words.

The Daily Mail yesterday spoke of the pilot using the ILS which utilises a laser beam to guide the aircraft down!

I wish they would stop calling it a plane, it is an aircraft or aeroplane, a plane is used by carpenters.

This was an undershoot that became a heavy landing. As a qualified pilot, the only reason I would avoid buildings is because they hurt if you hit them.
I guess the crew were too busy thinking airspeed airspeed to worry about much else.

[DispatchDragon]

Ian

I can understand that especially seeing as where it was coming from and they were probably getting to the bottom of the
tanks - and Scorpius - I can guarntee one this that was a very LOUD flight deck for quite a while.

Chris - If it happened ealier then there would have been a distress call. - The assumption here is that he lost power on
one or both inside the marker - deploying the RAT or anything else would not have been on the agenda - the presumtive being
"I can see the runway ,can I make it to the runway" would kick in - they did it and not a bad job either - and Im sure the
engineers on the website can tell you that the airplane failed at all the places you would expect .

(Sorry Chris I just read your post slowly - I see we see things the same way --- Bloody fuelers ;-)


Nice Job BA

Leif

[fmansam]

on a lighter note.....(as im one of them)

bloody firemen did a good job not to spill there tea when the crash alarm sounded!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! STUPID


seriously though..... who cares what the press say, i don't give a sh**, as there shi% nearly resulted in my mate getting killed in iraq.

lets all just wait and see.... regardless who does or does not get the blame, as someone will.... NO ONE DIED....


thats what counts for me. CHEERS

[Prop Jockey]

There was a quick video here on you tube of the aircraft on short finals. Naturally it has a very high angle of attack. Unfortunately when I went to check the link was working here in my post I can see that the video has been removed by the poster. You were able to find it if you searched for 'British Airways BA038 Approach'

There were some photos taken by someone at Heathrow with access to the aircraft on this site http://www.heathrowpictures.com/pictures/pictures.html

Unfortunately you can now see from the message displayed that they have been removed (there's a theme developing here) - but i post the link in case they return at some point.

With the AAIB choosing their words very carefully with the engines 'not responding', the fuel spill and no reference to descreasing EGT's on the FDR output it would seem like fuel starvation/contamination can be ruled out. It would seem through the staging of todays press conference that BA (and indeed the crew) are fairly confident that the equipment failed independantly of their management of that equipment, otherwise they'd be covered in more than egg when the final report comes out.

With the information available to date, it certainly looks like an outstanding piece of airmanship . I don't suppose testing every component from the throttles through the fadecs to the engines will be a quick job though :-(

[ianhind]

OFFTOPIC

One bit I did see was the road which it flew over missing the ten foot fence

As a lad many, many years ago, I used to spend hours by that fence (with telescope and airband radio) having cycled there on a Saturday/Sunday morning. Planes seemed low enough on a normal day.

And it is not too far away from where Tony (Techy) was talking about on his photo thread. Interesting no one has published a photo of the 777 on short finals - I can't believe that there was nobody at that location - seems to indicate that no one realised what was going on.

EDIT: I wrote this as Prop Jockey was posting but all video seems to have been removed - sold to the highest bidder - might explain the lack of photos.

[Prop Jockey]

sold to the highest bidder

Lol - thats exactly what i was thinking Ian.

Cheers

Rich

[Techy111]

Hmmm....in a way i wish i was there on that day....but again in my job......i am glad i wasn't.....I most definitely would not accept money if i was though.....

I have scruples.... :roll:


Tony

Edit......Skys got hold of it.......but nothing on it to indicate a problem......just a slight nose up AoA....

http://video.news.sky.com/skynews/video/

just below big screen....

[Chris Trott]

The Telegraph have managed to dredge up an incident some years ago at Denver involving a BA 777 and a fatal refuelling - quite how that could have any relevance beggars belief.

I knew the guy who was killed in that. I was working for Air Wisconsin at the time and he was our morning fueler. That was a QC issue where it was found that a bunch of the bayonets that allow the single point refuelling hose to connect to the airplane was cracked and when pressure was applied, it spread and eventually caused the bayonet to fail. Several hundred more were found with the same defect and the manufacturer of the part found themselves in some deep sh*t.

There is still dispute as to why the fire happened though. The report blamed it on fuel hitting the "still hot" engine exhaust cone, but everyone at ASIG was sure it was fuel hitting the running fuel truck's engine because the engine had been shut down for about 10 minutes when the accident happened and by that time the cone had cooled to well under the ignition temp for Jet-A. In addition, other fuelers had had small drips or leaks hit the exhaust cone around the same time after shutdown with no ignition which further supported that belief. Either way, the fueler died because he was in the basket over 20 feet in the air and was unable to quickly descend and get off safely. He died from his burns, but he also had several broken bones from the drop when he bailed out of the basket. As a result, they changed the fueling procedure and fueling had to be done from the ground on the 777 (this was a BA policy change although most 777 operators adopted it from what I've seen). This was a problem on occasion because of uneven fueling of the plane (the auto fuel system didn't always cut-off the left wing valves to let the right wing catch up) so we occasionally had to stop fueling to change the valve configuration and restart, a process that took almost a minute, and really slowed down the whole process.

Anyway, I'm getting off track - the relationship is simple - both aircraft involved were BA 777s and both involved the engines and fuel.