British Airways Flight BA38 Crash Lands At Heathrow Airport

You wouldn't bury the survivors though it's likely most soiled themselves.
British or not.

But that's what I was referring to!

If you read the account, an airport employee stated that the angle of attack appeared to be very high. If the angle is too high and then the engines starve for air, then they stall as well.

Technically..... no.

The UK still has enough little islands here and there so that truly the sun still never sets on the United Kingdom.

A simultaneous double engine failure is something that rarely ever occurs. I can't think of a precedence now, though there are a number of cases of complete power loss, mostly due to fuel shortage.

My personal haunch would be a meteorological fuck-up, a wind shear probably. The pilot should have been warned of this, but it is the most probable explanation in my eyes. I know an electric failure during approach from my own experience, it did not require to rush the landing. And I don't think two experienced pilots will panic if it occurs to them.

I'm totally with you, so far there is only speculation. I don't give much into eyewitness reports, especially if the witnesses don't want their names to be published.

It could be an engine stall, but a simultaneous engine stall on both engines is something I have never heard of happening. Engine stalls on final are tricky, it would need at least 20 or 30 seconds to recover for a go-around.

Another matter on the electric systems loss. I have a few accidents report from ASN, usually a reliable source. Here we go.

Martinair, 5/28/96 (B-767-31/AER)

AirTran, 3/26/03 (B-717-2BD)

The pilot did a great job getting the plane on the ground without any major injuries. I'm always amazed how they keep their cool.

Doesn't Heathrow have a bird problem? I remember something about that airport taking measures to shoo migratory geese away. Not sure if there are any birds in the dead of winter in London however.

I don't buy into a high angle causing a cutoff. I simply don't believe it.

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earllogjam, a flock of geese was mentioned to BBC news as a possibility. As big as geese are, muliple hits into an engine can put a big hurt on an engine even one as big as the R.R. Trent.

Modern engines such as those used on the B777 are designed to take a hit from a single large bird such as a goose. Pratt & Whitney used dead turkeys when testing their PW4086. But two into one engine is iffy, three will most likely cause a cutoff.

But it's really too soon to speculate about causes.

Fuel shortage was one 'theory', I'm not sure how long (or if) the aircraft was in the hold but I'm not at all convinced of fuel shortage but with airline cutbacks, who can be sure these days.

Wind shear was my first thought and it would fit with a sudden loss of altitude and high incidence. Oddly it would appear the gear was deployed very late in the approach if we're to believe what are after all passenger reports. Also some witnesses said the gear wasn't even down, though that makes it hard to explain it being ripped off in that case, I'd say. I tend to ignore witness statements unless they are consistent and these are anything but.

Agreed, but as you say - both engines at once? The FDR will rule such things in or out.

That seems to be the main focus right now, I read today that the pilot reported a 'total' electrical systems and power loss. There have been up to a dozen incidents of electrical overloads and fires on the 777 since its launch, resulting in at least one aborted take off. It may be related.

The preliminary report is due tomorrow, it (and the final report) should make interesting reading. I imagine Boeing will be paying close attention.

The ASN Report:

So the throttle didn't respond? Could lack of power have caused a stall?

Interesting.

Well, on approach power is used to control rate of descent, not speed which is controlled by pitch so a lack of power could, for a given airspeed cause a rate of descent such that the aircraft would potentially land short. Trying to correct (reduce) that rate of descent (and, avoid perhaps landing on the road) by pitching up could reduce airspeed enough to cause a stall. It's unclear that this is what happened but it's plausible.

600 feet isn't much of a margin for engine failure, especially double engine 'failure'. The engines may be fine, it could be that communication between A/T and throttle control and the engines was at fault. That worries me far more.

Hard on grass is more appealing than soft on a busy road so perhaps that was the trade off the crew took. Again, this is lay speculation. I'll look forward to reading a more detailed report with, hopefully detailed conclusions.

This sort of thing interests me. This one is just fascinating because of the plane involved, the crew, the airline, and the location. Each could be considered the best there is in commercial air travel.

The ground crew said there was, "considerable fuel," leaking from the airplane so it doesn't appear to have been starved for fuel and, even if it was, why were there no low-fuel warnings?

This BBC report takes into consideration a number of possible causes and they too consider birds, wind shear, and controller error. An interesting point was that while Rolls Royce is taking part in the investigation, there is no expectation of the engines being the problem, but the engine controls. The pilot was not at the controls during descent, the copilot was, but that the autopilot was actually controlling the plane during landing.

When crashes like this happen right at an airport and everyone (thankfully) survives, the opportunities for examination are just about perfect. I'm very interested to see what the preliminary and final reports will conclude.

Some plane crashes just interest me more than others. I saw TWA 800 happen on the news as the first reports came in and I was convinced, somehow, that it wasn't supposed to have happened. I just kept thinking, 'This is wrong. That plane wasn't supposed to go down.' Not that any are, but the feeling that an outside force had caused the crash was one I couldn't shake. Turns out the controversy from that crash still has not been settled and I truly believe something beyond the failure of any of the plane's parts was the cause.

I don't get that feeling with this crash but I still find this one fascinating given its oddity.

Oh and I have no expertise in this area beyond being an occasional passenger. My grandfather was the flier in the family, receiving his pilot's license from Orville Wright! He was also a pioneer glider and helped develop the military's glider program. On his 92nd birthday my mom took him to an airport to fly with a modern glider and he was just the happiest man in the world. The pilot let him take a few turns at the controls and it brought back a world of memories that just fascinated the whole airport crew.

I miss him.

Glad you weren't on that flight Headbang. Close call. Someone's looking out for you.

Dong, is your interest in this personal in that you also averted an airline disaster by some stroke of fate?

It's certainly unusual. The report you linked is lifted from the AAIB prelim which contains a little more info, though nothing substantive. I didn't think this was out until tomorrow.

No, at least not to my knowledge in an aviation sense at least though I did have a rather close shave on an approach when doing my PPL. In this instance it's mostly that I regularly fly into and out of Heathrow (last time a week back) and I live on the approach path. Also, this incident caught my attention a little more that usual because of its unusual nature and 'familiar' surroundings, if that makes any sense. Also the odd coincidence of HB being in China.

I also used to be a GA pilot many years back so one could say I have a pseudo professional interest. It's just adding those factors together.

Random 'chance' has caused me to count my blessings in other incidents though.

Ahh, didn't know you were a pilot. Is PPL some sort of training test?

I remember a flight approach path that goes over the Kew Gardens and is a rather densly populated area. I'd be very interested in why the plane stalled as well. If it stalled any sooner we'd be asking about you as well as Headbang I guess.

As a passenger it must be quite upsetting seeing that hulk of a wreck out your airplane window as you take off or worse, land at Heathrow. It brings me images of the airport in Montego Bay, Jamaica where cannibalized crashed planes are within eyesight of the take off taxiways.