A British Airways flight was forced to make an emergency landing at Heathrow with one engine damaged and the other on fire after tired engineers worked on the wrong aircraft. Passengers were left terrified when the covers of both engines blew off and one of them burst into flames and the pilot was forced to return to the airport on one damaged engine.
A British Airways flight from London to Oslo in May 2013 made an emergency landing after while the plane scatted chunks of metal, some weighing up to 37kg, across the runway.
An Air Accident Investigation Bureau report (AAIB) found that blundering engineers had accidentally left the plane’s engine covers unlatched during maintenance operations at Heathrow.
Two nightshift engineers had intended to return to top up the oil and latch the fan cowls, but had gone back to an entirely different plane, which was a different model, on a different stand.
Investigators found that the workers could have been ‘compromised by fatigue’.
One of the BA technicians had worked 70 hours over seven consecutive days and nights and was on the second of two 12-hour overtime nightshifts.
Though they were initially suspended, British Airways have confirmed that the staff will remain with the company.
The blunder was also missed by a pilot and ground handler inspections before take off.
The investigation revealed that one of the fuel covers cut through a fuel pipe after take off, causing the engine to set on fire and leaking almost three tonnes of fuel.
However, the engine was shut down promptly which reduced the intensity of the fire, but forced the pilot to land on just one engine.
Just 33 minutes after taking off, flight BA762 was back on the runway and all 75 passengers and five crew members were being evacuated via the emergency chutes.
No-one was injured but investigators revealed that one had put other passengers at risk by throwing his suitcase down the emergency chute.
Source: DailyMail, Telegraph
