British Airways Plane Crash at Heathrow Airport
- Thread starter Robin
- 44 comments
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ExigeEvan
Premium
- 17,192
Seems to be that the power did all go....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/17/nheathrow517.xml
Daily Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/17/nheathrow517.xml
- 1,202
Some UK rag (no I didn't pay for it. I have enough toilet paper) has already printed or repeated a story detailing some unflattering facts about the pilot's past (that have nothing to do with the 777 incident). I'm not going to give details out of respect for the pilot's private life, so please don't ask, but I do wish to comment on how disgusting I find it that people will dig twenty odd years into someone's past and dig up a story that has nothing to do with the current event, just to sell some scandal on the back of someone's unexpected fame.
Makes me very upset.
EDIT: Name of newspaper removed since I don't want to give them free publicity
Makes me very upset.
EDIT: Name of newspaper removed since I don't want to give them free publicity
- 3,323
- GTP_Mark
- Mark T33
- 87,629
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
The Daily Fail is just a piss-poor excuse for neo-Nazism. It preys on every tiny fear we have - change, foreign things, terrorism - to promote its agenda of idiocy. Hell, they even supported Hitler in the run up to WW2.
A typical Faily Mail headline is:
"Immigrant Terrorist Paedophile Drug Addicts to be Given Free Housing"
With a subheading involving a cartoon planet and the phrase "IS BRITAIN GOING MAD?!" with the emphasis on "mad".
They certainly wouldn't shrink from character assassination, but a story with wording of the type "Hero Pilot Was Like 'Rampant Buffalo' In The Sack" is more Mirror/Sun/News of the World.
- 87,629
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
That's a negative. Aeroplanes do not tend to have second officers. The three flight crew were Captain, Senior First Officer and First Officer.
Whomever sits in the left seat is the pilot - normally the Captain. Whomever sits in the right seat is the copilot - normally the First Officer. It is not unusual for the copilot to fly the plane on approach (well... keep his eye on the autopilot and do the last 50 feet himself).
So the pilot wasn't flying it.
One is from a newspaper and states at least one factual inaccuracy. One is from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, who not only have been on board the plane and investigated the (closed) crash site and plane wreckage themselves, but who have now released the airframe to be moved and, most importantly, have analysed the Flight Data Recorder telemetry.
Have the Daily Telegraph been near the Flight Data Recorder?
As Duke alludes - the plane came down from the point of failure to the point of impact at a 16:1 glide to (negative) climb ratio - 16 horizontal feet covered for 1 vertical foot lost. You can reasonably expect a plane in flat, level flight with a complete power failure to all operating engines to do no better than a 12:1 ratio - 12 horizontal feet covered for 1 vertical foot lost. And that's trimmed for level flight and at 600mph. Flight 38 came down 16:1 while in a landing configuration at 240mph. That suggests that either the 777 is such a superb glider that it can best any other plane's best unpowered efforts despite a much lower ground speed and dirty configuration or the aircraft still had power to the engines (just not enough). Like the AAIB say.
- 15,494
- UK
Well as I understood the report the engines didn't respond to calls for more thrust, this could mean:
1) The engines were losing power and didn't respond to more power.
or
2) They were a little short and asked for more power, but they couldn't get any more, so the engine stayed at x power rather than lost all power.
Make sense?
1) The engines were losing power and didn't respond to more power.
or
2) They were a little short and asked for more power, but they couldn't get any more, so the engine stayed at x power rather than lost all power.
Make sense?
- 1,202
Yeah. They are specifically avoiding saying that the engines shut down. I also notice that no passenger has yet mentioned that the engines or plane went quiet before touchdown. If the engines stopped, I expect the lack of noise in the cabin would have been noticed. Also, as one of the news channels has mentioned, it would be very odd for both engines to suffer mechanical failure at the same time.
It alls, to me at least, suggests that the engines were still providing power but either a) a fuel quality / quantity problem was strangling them or b) they were not receiving any instructions from the cockpit.
I wouldn't have thought fuel quality would have been the problem, on the suspicion that this would have become apparent earlier in the flight. A lack of fuel may have caused both engines to struggle to accelerate simultaneously but I am sure the crew would have been aware of a fuel shortage before that point. I'd also be surprised if the fuel feed system had no redundancy and that both engines relied on the same pump somewhere.
In short I suspect either a software problem or an electrical component failure in the cockpit / avionics bay. My prime suspect is an autopilot glitch, and it's possible perhaps that, not having much time, the pilots might not have fully disengaged the autopilot when attempting to throttle up and that the throttles were still under autopilot control. I don't know if that's possible in a BA 777, but I know some aeroplanes have autopilots that can be partially engaged, so it commands some controls, e.g. rudder, while the pilot / copilot commands the rest.
All speculation though, on my part.
- 15,494
- UK
An interesting story to tell.
My Dad is currently doing some training at work to become a BSI licensed Internal Auditor, and the bloke running the course was saying this his colleague is doing an audit at BA. The story/rumour is that the fuel gauge was faulty and the plan ran out of fuel, which goes with the engines not responding to power. Also, 2 weeks before the same plane had a fuel gauge problem but was put back out.
This isn't truth, yet.
Any thoughts? I don't think we've touched on this possibiilty.
My Dad is currently doing some training at work to become a BSI licensed Internal Auditor, and the bloke running the course was saying this his colleague is doing an audit at BA. The story/rumour is that the fuel gauge was faulty and the plan ran out of fuel, which goes with the engines not responding to power. Also, 2 weeks before the same plane had a fuel gauge problem but was put back out.
This isn't truth, yet.
Any thoughts? I don't think we've touched on this possibiilty.
- 4,759
- Kansas City, MO
- FlyingAGasoline
Isn't part of the preflight checklist to inspect the fuel level manually? I understand that may not work the same way for a large airliner, but wouldn't there be some mechanical gauge that is accessible from a panel for the ground crew to use? Or.. did such an item fail?
I wouldn't think the 777 has a 16:1 glide ratio. That would be insane.
- 1,202
Yes, a manual check is part of a pre flight check, or at least it was last time I looked. Funnily enough, I believe a dipstick is the most common article used when manually checking fuel levels, but the bowser that fills the jet up will have its own instruments as well.
Commercial planes have run out of fuel before because of incorrect preflight and inflight tests, but that has often been because someone got their units mixed up, eg. was counting litres when they were supposed to be counting gallons or something. There was a famous case of, if I recall correctly, a large cargo jet that had to glide to some remote strip in Alaska (I think) because it had 10000 litres of fuel when it should have had 10000 gallons, or something like that.
