BA Crash Landing

Brogs · Post by **Brogs** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:30 pm

I think we should give a big cheer for the First Officer who brought down the BA flight at Heathrow when they had a catastrophic power failure on app and managed to land it on the Grass, everybody safe , just three minor injurie,s , some of the passengers didn,t even know they had crash landed
" I thought it was a bit bumpy and didn,t realise until all the Oxygen Masks fell" that guy certainly earned his crust !!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7194086.stm

rossspargo · Post by **rossspargo** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 3:08 pm

Yeah the First Officer certainly done an extremely good job yesterday! I saw the news reports both yesterday and today on ITV.

Good to hear from the pilots today

mlegein · Post by **mlegein** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 5:22 pm

rossspargo wrote:Yeah the First Officer certainly done an extremely good job yesterday! I saw the news reports both yesterday and today on ITV.

Good to hear from the pilots today

Why did the FO land and not the Captain?

yoni63 · Post by **yoni63** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 5:42 pm

The clip I was watching, the Captain indicated it was just the Senior FO's turn to fly the approach and it just happened.

There was a Captain, a senior FO and another FO on board. The suboordinate FO was quoted as saying, "So that is what that switch is for..."

(kidding).

rossspargo · Post by **rossspargo** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 5:54 pm

mlegein wrote:Why did the FO land and not the Captain?

yoni63 wrote:The clip I was watching, the Captain indicated it was just the Senior FO's turn to fly the approach and it just happened.

Yeah Same! The Captain, Senior FO and I think the woman must have been the Relief FO or the Senior Cabin Crew Member, were doing a press talk and the Captain quoted that the S FO was in control of the plane on the return leg, approach and landing

Ross S

yoni63 · Post by **yoni63** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 6:01 pm

Justin, we lost an aerocommander the other night off of 36 R on departure. One pilot on board carrying cargo. (Fatality). He reported problems with his Gyro, made two 360's and disappeared from the scope. Normally you would figure the vacuum back-up would be working but another factor is the weather was going to pot all at the same time. Rain, sleet, and freezing temps... Makes me wonder if he wasn't already facing some static port/pitot icing while still on the ground and just didn't know it.

Post by **nwadc10** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 7:01 pm

yoni63 wrote:Justin, we lost an aerocommander the other night off of 36 R on departure. One pilot on board carrying cargo. (Fatality). He reported problems with his Gyro, made two 360's and disappeared from the scope. Normally you would figure the vacuum back-up would be working but another factor is the weather was going to pot all at the same time. Rain, sleet, and freezing temps... Makes me wonder if he wasn't already facing some static port/pitot icing while still on the ground and just didn't know it.

Wow, that's too bad. Your assumption seems correct but of course we won't know for sure until the final report comes out and we still may not even know.

With regards to the FO landing the BA jet, there's no rule that says the FO has to even be allowed to fly the airplane. It's always the decision of the captain whether or not to let the FO fly. It's assumed that the front end crew will alternate legs unless the captain says otherwise, or the FO decides not to fly that leg. Controls can also be transferred from the FO to the captain any time during the flight. If I were the FO on that flight, I would have given the controls to the captain. But then again, some situations may make the transfer of controls at a difficult phase more dangerous than letting the FO keep the controls

dave colavecchio · Post by **dave colavecchio** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 8:39 pm

Don't get to crazy handing out medals to the Speedbird crew yet. Something made that airplane "land" short. It may be the crew who did something wrong in the final analysis. Basically, don't speculate either way. Wait for the facts to play out and for the CVR/FDR data analysis to be completed...

mlegein · Post by **mlegein** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:57 pm

nwadc10 wrote: With regards to the FO landing the BA jet, there's no rule that says the FO has to even be allowed to fly the airplane. It's always the decision of the captain whether or not to let the FO fly. It's assumed that the front end crew will alternate legs unless the captain says otherwise, or the FO decides not to fly that leg. Controls can also be transferred from the FO to the captain any time during the flight. If I were the FO on that flight, I would have given the controls to the captain. But then again, some situations may make the transfer of controls at a difficult phase more dangerous than letting the FO keep the controls

That was my point. Once they knew that they would have to glide to the runway, why didn't the Captain take back control from the SFO?

Post by **nwadc10** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:14 pm

Does BA really have a "Senior First Officer" title or is "senior" just being used as an adjective? Also, was there a post-crash fire? I saw the engines were heavily damaged but I don't recall seeing fire damage. Maybe this accident didn't compromise the fuel tanks (although a fire could be fed downline of the fuel tank) but usually when there is no post-crash fire it means there was no fuel in the tank(s). I'm not saying at all that this is the case here because I don't really want to speculate and I'm sure there are other explanations as to why the engines didn't power up when commanded by the computers or when commanded by the crew.

yoni63 · Post by **yoni63** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:36 pm

nwadc10 wrote:Does BA really have a "Senior First Officer" title or is "senior" just being used as an adjective? Also, was there a post-crash fire? I saw the engines were heavily damaged but I don't recall seeing fire damage. Maybe this accident didn't compromise the fuel tanks (although a fire could be fed downline of the fuel tank) but usually when there is no post-crash fire it means there was no fuel in the tank(s). I'm not saying at all that this is the case here because I don't really want to speculate and I'm sure there are other explanations as to why the engines didn't power up when commanded by the computers or when commanded by the crew.

They must not have had "Duracell" (trademark)

Mike Bridge · Post by **Mike Bridge** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 6:54 am

Do BA pilots get bonues for fuel used ?? As i have heard alot of whispers about the plane
running out of fuel.
But i find this hard to believe as they have seperate tanks and for both to run out at the same time would be unlucky!

Brogs · Post by **Brogs** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 7:15 am

The initial report of the investigators says that at 600ft alt and 2mls from the threshold the Autothrottle failed to respond to a request from the Pilot for more power, this happened twice, the engines also failed to respond when the Captain increased the throttles manually. The Senior FO was flying the plane and according to BA procedure the way I understood it they are not in the habit of jumping from FO to Capt and vice versa and by the time they realised the s**t they were in ,there wasn,t enough time, they had another FO on board because of the length of the flight , also the Girl at the Press conference was the Senior Cabin Attendant, and so far there hasn,t been any mention of a shortage of fuel, They estimate it may take upto a year before we get the full report, but its strange that they haven,t grounded the rest of the 777 until they can identify the cause.

Mike Bridge · Post by **Mike Bridge** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 7:36 am

Well thats why i think they havent grounded the fleet, as it isnt a fleet problem.
Found this ona Techincal forum, no fire might indicate no fuel perhaps ??????

It's highly unlikely to be pilot error, the Boeing 777 suffered a double engine flame out. Engine flame outs are usually caused by one of 2 things, fuel starvation and/or intake contamination such as volcanic dust (this has happened). When a gas turbine reaches self-sustaining (ie a set percentage RPM), the engine does not require an electrical supply to keep it turning. Engine ignitors are used only to start engines.

The news footage appeared to show that the flight crew had started or attempted to start the APU (which is a small gas turbine located at the rear of the aircraft). The APU can provide power to enable operation of various aircraft services but cannot provide the same electrical power as an engine.

Without being in possession of all the technical information regarding the status of the aircraft at the time of the incident, I couldn't state, without a shadow of a doubt, what caused this accident to occur.
From my knowledge at this stage of the investigation, I would put the problem down to fuel starvation, caused by either a catastrophic failure of the fuel system or the aircraft simply ran out of fuel. This has also happened before).

yoni63 · Post by **yoni63** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 8:06 am

On one report, I did hear the whispers of a bird strike, but it was small mentioned. They stated they lost everything to include electrical. Wonder if they deployed the RAT? They surely must have if they continued to have control surface response.