The Newsroom

Heathrow Boeing 777 Crash Landing - News Coverage

(January 2008)

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MA
Markymark
BBC WORLD posted:

This was an amazing feat of airmanship for which the Captain and Co-Pilot, as well as the cabin crew, have justifiably been commended by all involved.


It was, but keep an open mind still. It may have simply just run out of fuel, in which case that puts a quite different perspective on the event.

It's rather too early to praise or condemn anybody.

For the record I've flown over 400 times, 95% of those flights have been with BA. I'm flying with them again shortly, and I have absolutely no worries about that at this stage.
JH
Jonathan H
BBC WORLD posted:
It was BA's home base (i.e. LHR). It is unthinkable for any incident of this major nature to occur at Heathrow, let alone an incident involving the flag carrier's brand new fleet!

Unthinkable? Clearly only before yesterday!

BBC WORLD posted:
Did BBC or ITN anchor the Ten from the scene? I would like to think that they did, given that the incident only occurred a few moments from their HQ's.

Not quite "moments" away. Getting across London on a busy day takes quite a while! But yes, I believe both did anchor from Heathrow.
JH
Jonathan H
Markymark posted:
It was, but keep an open mind still. It may have simply just run out of fuel, in which case that puts a quite different perspective on the event.

It's extremely unlikely that it ran out of fuel. There would have been emergency services waiting, the runway would have been cleared for the inbound flight, ground controllers would have been alerted and much more of a sense of a 'managed' crisis, rather than the apparent bolt out of the blue that seems to have occurred yesterday.
ST
Stuart
BBC WORLD posted:
Did BBC or ITN anchor the Ten from the scene? I would like to think that they did, given that the incident only occurred a few moments from their HQ's.

ITV/ITN anchored from Heathrow for the early evening news. The newly re-launched "News at Ten" was left with a smug Trevor McDonald on his own at 10pm, with a wind-swept Julie stuck on the same crane 20ft above the ground that their advertised "on the spot reporter" had been on only 3 hours before.

BBC fared badly I think, although by the time it got to "Newsnight" they had picked up on the engine failure story. ITV/ITN had coverered it better in terms of possible explanations though (and believe me, that's unusual for me to think that), they had done quite alot of background research when BBC were just messing about doing reports from passengers.

This wasn't just a change in what was on News at Ten, this was evident on the 6:30 bulletin. Is this a real change in editorial control we are seeing?
MA
Markymark
Jonathan H posted:
Markymark posted:
It was, but keep an open mind still. It may have simply just run out of fuel, in which case that puts a quite different perspective on the event.

It's extremely unlikely that it ran out of fuel. There would have been emergency services waiting, the runway would have been cleared for the inbound flight, ground controllers would have been alerted and much more of a sense of a 'managed' crisis, rather than the apparent bolt out of the blue that seems to have occurred yesterday.


There are huge commercial and professional consequences for an airline, and pilot to initiate a low fuel emergency alert. I suspect many planes land with less than a safe amount of fuel still on board. There's also the total absence of any fire with this accident.

Regrettably commercial considerations do often override safety these days, and it's naive to think aviation is immune.
JH
Jonathan H
Markymark posted:
Jonathan H posted:
Markymark posted:
It was, but keep an open mind still. It may have simply just run out of fuel, in which case that puts a quite different perspective on the event.

It's extremely unlikely that it ran out of fuel. There would have been emergency services waiting, the runway would have been cleared for the inbound flight, ground controllers would have been alerted and much more of a sense of a 'managed' crisis, rather than the apparent bolt out of the blue that seems to have occurred yesterday.

There are huge commercial and professional consequences for an airline, and pilot to initiate a low fuel emergency alert. I suspect many planes land with less than a safe amount of fuel still on board. There's also the total absence of any fire with this accident.

Regrettably commercial considerations do often override safety these days, and it's naive to think aviation is immune.

And even larger and more severe commercial and professional consequences if it turns out the pilot knew he was dangerously low on fuel and told nobody. There are plenty of other cases where planes have been low (and sometimes dangerously low) on fuel and have been given priority clearance to an airfield. I would be astonished if low fuel was the cause of this. We'll find out soon enough. By the way, the fact that there was no fire on impact does not (in itself) lend weight to the theory that he ran out of fuel.
ST
Stuart
Jonathan H posted:
There are plenty of other cases where planes have been low (and sometimes dangerously low) on fuel and have been given priority clearance to an airfield. I would be astonished if low fuel was the cause of this. We'll find out soon enough. By the way, the fact that there was no fire on impact does not (in itself) lend weight to the theory that he ran out of fuel.

A Boeing-777 has multiple warning systems about low fuel. They even have 2 back-up power supplies to run all the electrical/hydraulic systems if the engines fail. Methinks that many things would have been screaming "no fuel" in the cockpit well before Heathrow if that was the case!

No fire on impact could be due to the rapid landing on grass, and little fuel left (as they were about to land anyway), or just something really odd happening.

Let's just be grateful that it wasn't worse!

PS: I think I watch too much "Air Crash Investigation" on NatGeo Channel! Sad
JH
Jonathan H
StuartPlymouth posted:
Jonathan H posted:
There are plenty of other cases where planes have been low (and sometimes dangerously low) on fuel and have been given priority clearance to an airfield. I would be astonished if low fuel was the cause of this. We'll find out soon enough. By the way, the fact that there was no fire on impact does not (in itself) lend weight to the theory that he ran out of fuel.

A Boeing-777 has multiple warning systems about low fuel. They even have 2 back-up power supplies to run all the electrical/hydraulic systems if the engines fail. Methinks that many things would have been screaming "no fuel" in the cockpit well before Heathrow if that was the case!

No fire on impact could be due to the rapid landing on grass, and little fuel left (as they were about to land anyway), or just something really odd happening.

Let's just be grateful that it wasn't worse!

Indeed. And I think I'm right in saying that the 777 has two fuel tanks (one for each engine) which are extremely unlikely to run out of gas at exactly the same time. Depending on the variant, some 777s have a third tank too. All seems a bit strange...
ST
Stuart
Indeed there have been cases where planes have run out of fuel, but they either knew about it beforehand (and it was ignored by Air Traffic Control) or the flight crew were unconcious (as in another sad case over Athens).

I don't think this was the case here, it would've leaked out by now, as they flight crew survived and would have spilled the beans.

Back to the coverage though, I think it has been excellent so far for the main bulletins. Brief, chasing the story rather than the poor passengers; good journalism to the fore perhaps?
LC
Lewis c
[quote="BBC WORLD"]
3) It was BA's home base (i.e. LHR). It is unthinkable for any incident of this major nature to occur at Heathrow, let alone an incident involving the flag carrier's brand new fleet!


Yes i know . But a BA Trident stalled on take off and crashed in a field near Staines back in 1972 there were NO survivors .
ST
Stuart
Lewis c posted:
But a BA Trident stalled on take off and crashed in a field near Staines back in 1972 there were NO survivors .

36 years is along time without an accident at the world's busiest airport!
JH
Jonathan H
StuartPlymouth posted:
ITV/ITN anchored from Heathrow for the early evening news. The newly re-launched "News at Ten" was left with a smug Trevor McDonald on his own at 10pm, with a wind-swept Julie stuck on the same crane 20ft above the ground that their advertised "on the spot reporter" had been on only 3 hours before.

Back to the coverage, did ITV really say "on the spot reporter"? It wasn't a reporter at 6.30, it was Mark Austin! And what was wrong with it being the same crane position?

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