Engine Failed On Takeoff, Pilot Chose To Continue, Ran Short Of
Fuel But Saved Company Nearly $200,000
On Saturday, February 19, a British Airways flight took off from
Los Angeles' LAX airport, destined for Heathrow, with 351 pax and
crew aboard. Shortly after takeoff, with the aircraft not more than
100 feet over the ground, controllers notified the pilot that a
shower of sparks could be seen coming out of one of the engines.
The pilot responded by throttling back, but the engine continued to
overheat and the crew decided it had to be shut down.
You would think that the aircraft would immediately make plans
to return, including dumping fuel if necessary, and turn back to
land at LAX, no? Not this time.
After circling the Pacific for a few minutes while the captain
contacted BA's control center, the crew decided to continue the
11-hour, 5,000 mile flight to Heathrow on three engines, rather
than turn back and face a minimum five hour delay, at an estimated
cost of nearly $200,000. Just three days before, a new EU
regulation had come into force that would have required British
Airways to compensate the passengers for long delays or
cancellations.
The British Air Line
Pilots' Association wasted no time in reacting to the incident with
a statement warning the industry that the new regulation could have
the result of pressuring pilots to take more risks for the sake of
avoiding expensive compensation rules. Had the BA flight been
delayed more than five hours, the airline would have been forced to
compensate the passengers the full cost of their tickets as well as
flying them to their destination for free and providing them with
hotel accommodations for overnight delays.
The airline had initially stated that the engine failure
occurred an hour into the flight, but the facts soon changed
when it was determined the engine problem had
happened only seconds into the flight. To make matters worse, the
crew knew that the aircraft would burn more fuel because it would
be unable to climb to FL360, its assigned altitude. Instead, it was
forced stay down at FL290 with extra rudder drag due to the
differential thrust created by the engine shut down. As the
aircraft made its way to Heathrow over the Atlantic, the
crew realized they wouldn't have enough fuel and
requested an emergency landing at Manchester airport, where the
London Times reports the aircraft was met by four fire engines and
more than two dozen fire fighters.
BA denies that financial considerations played a part in the
decision to continue the flight. Captain Doug Brown, BA's 747
Senior Captain, said the only issue was “what was best for
passengers.”
“The plane is as
safe on three engines as on four and it can fly on two. It was
really a customer service issue, not a safety issue. The options
would have been limited for passengers [if the plane had returned
to Los Angeles],” Brown told the London times. He also
pointed out that the captain of the 747 would have had to dump tens
of thousands of gallons of Jet-A over waters just off the
coast of California, which would have raised serious environmental
concerns. “The authorities would have had words to say about
that,” said Brown.
However, David Learmount, safety editor of Flight International,
questioned the decision to continue the flight all the way to Great
Britain. “It was a very odd decision to continue to London,"
said Learmount. "Even if the pilot didn’t want to dump so
much fuel, he could have diverted to Chicago. You are not as safe
on three engines as you are on four and I suspect that, given the
choice, most passengers would have opted to return to
LA.”
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