September 24, 2006
British Airways Flight 268 and the lost engine
WSJ.com - The Middle SeatThe fire burned out quickly, but the controversy has continued to smolder.
An air-traffic controller watching the runways radioed a warning to British Airways Flight 268 and assumed the plane would quickly turn around. To controllers' surprise, the pilots checked with their company and then flew on, hoping to "get as far as we can," as the captain told the control tower. The jumbo jet ultimately traveled more than 5,000 miles with a dead engine before making an emergency landing in Manchester, England, as the crew worried about running out of fuel.
The Los Angeles air-traffic-control tapes, obtained by The Wall Street Journal under the Freedom of Information Act, show that controllers who saw the fiery engine failure with the jet just 296 feet in the air were immediately concerned about the flight and ready to guide it back to the airport. But the decision to return or keep flying rested with the captain and the airline. Ever since, pilots and aviation regulators have debated the decision of the pilots and British Airways. Their questions: Even if the plane was capable of reaching its destination, and perhaps legal to fly, was it smart to try? And was it safe?
The incident also focused renewed attention on an age-old issue in aviation -- safety versus economics. An emergency landing would have required dumping $30,000 of fuel, and the airline might have owed $275,000 in compensation to passengers under European Union rules if the flight was more than five hours late. The British Airways pilots' union questioned whether the EU compensation rules, only days old at the time, pressured airlines into pushing flights into risky situations. And in online discussions, pilots wondered if the three pilots might have been pressured into a risky flight to save the airline money.
interesting dilemna
He next told the controller, "We have now shut down the No. 2 engine. We are going to consult our company and see what they require us to do."After making four more 90-degree turns, and sending a co-pilot back in the cabin to look out the window at the engine, the captain said: "We just decided we want to set off on our flight-plan route and get as far as we can. So we'd like clearance to, ah, continue our flight plan."
The controller gave the captain clearance to a higher altitude. But when he called other controllers to make arrangements down the line on an internal intercom system, surprise was evident.
"Remember that Speedbird I told you about?" the controller asked a colleague.
"Yeah."
"He's engine-out -- No. 2 engine out. He's going to continue to his destination or as far as he can get," the departure controller said.
"OK. I have no flight plan on him." The tapes show the controllers had assumed the pilot wasn't going to London, so they deleted the flight plan from the computer. To reconstruct it, the departure controller called the tower.
"Is he going?" the tower controller who had seen the engine flames asked.
"He's going," was the answer.
"If you would have saw what we saw out the window, you'd be amazed at that," said the tower controller.
As the flight moved east, the departure controller passed the pilot on to another controller. "Thanks for your help. Cheers," the captain said. "Good luck," said the departure controller.
[snip]
After the landing -- uneventful but for fire trucks on hand -- controversy arose among pilots. U.K. and U.S. agencies both opened investigations. Britain's learned that British Airways had flown 747s to distant destinations on three engines 15 times since April 2001.
Yipes
Posted by TY at September 24, 2006 2:52 PM
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