Tonight:
5°c
Hero Heathrow pilot tells of crash as report into incident reveals fuel flow fault
9 Feb 2010The hero British Airways pilot who averted disaster when his plane crash-landed at Heathrow airport told today of his fear that all 152 people on board were going to die.
Captain Peter Burkill and co-pilot John Coward were hailed as heroes when passengers and crew escaped with only minor injuries after the plane crash-landed 330 metres short of the runway.
An investigation into the crash on 17 January 2008 concluded that the plane lost power due to a restricted fuel flow to both engines, which had probably been caused by a build-up of ice during the flight from Beijing.
The report by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch added that ice had probably formed within the system from water that occurred naturally in the fuel.
Captain Burkill, 43, who took voluntary redundancy from BA last year, said he still continues to be affected by the crash. “I always think about it — as well as my wife — it will probably never leave me,” he said.
Describing the moment the plane lost power just as it was landing, he said: “It naturally became apparent that we were going to crash and we were not going to make the runway.
“My view of that accident from that point was that we were going to start descending very quickly — about a 1,800ft (548.64-metre) descent rate — and I could see the impact point was going to be around about the Hatton Cross area which includes catering buildings, a Tube station and a petrol station.” He said his priority was to get the plane over any buildings and away from the Heathrow perimeter road.
He handed the controls to Mr Coward while he raised the plane's flaps to reduce the drag from the wings in a bid to reduce the rate of descent.
“When I realised we were coming in far too steeply with the loss of power and we were heading towards the buildings, I had to reduce the drag, and as we were going to crash on ground, I needed the [landing] gear,” he said. “The gear was going to take most of the brunt of the crash so I daren't raise that up.”
As the plane hit the ground and slid 372 metres before coming to rest, he thought he was going to die. He said: “We were now in an aircraft on the ground that was sliding uncontrollably and at that point I thought I was going to die, so I said goodbye to my wife.”
On 28 November 2008 a Delta Airlines Boeing 777 suffered a similar ice problem while flying over America —prompting an investigation by the US National Transportation Safety Board. The AAIB made 18 safety recommendations following the two incidents.
Boeing and Rolls-Royce, which makes aircraft engines, said they had taken steps to prevent the ice problem recurring. The AAIB has now made a further nine safety recommendations, including some which test a plane's “crashworthiness” to withstand such incidents.
