Forums Forums National News Airliner crash-lands at Heathrow

An international passenger plane has crash-landed short of the south runway at Heathrow Airport after losing its rear undercarriage.

All 136 passengers and 16 crew escaped from the British Airways flight BA038 from Beijing. Six people have been taken to hospital with minor injuries.

An airport worker told the BBC that the pilot said he had lost all power and had to glide the plane into land.

All BA short haul flights from Heathrow have been cancelled and others delayed.

The BBC's Angus Crawford said the worker, who was not identified, said the pilot told him all the electronics had also failed.

BA refused to comment on the report and said it would not speculate on the cause of the crash.

bbc news

I'll be intregued to see what the fault with the plane was. Luckily it was so close to Heathrow when this happened it was able to land. Hope it doesn't have too much an effect on the roads with many passenger delays tonight as i live relativley close and it will have knock on effects. Luckily i dont have to go central London becasue the Picadilly line will be jam packed more than usual!

Watched this live this afternoon on the 1pm news, the BBC getting sketchy reports from the PA, which all turned out to be true.

Will be interested to see what the cause was.

I like the way that some guy, who was driving his car on the road near it, is in a bid for fame by stating "it was terrible, he could see it had problems as it went over his car", when even seasoned plane spotters thought it was just a normal landing until the last couple of seconds, and cabin crew and passengers just thought it was a rough landing... Some people dont half chat shit!!

yeah i watched it on the news today aswell, It landed a fair bit before the runway aswell.

They say he glided it in due to no power.
Cleared the fence by 15ft...

At last a pilot who earned his £200,000 pay cheque

Yeah, but that doesnt explain the cause

They havent ruled anything out last time I watched the news (6:30 on ITV), but its highly unlikely it was a fuelling problem, so it means it must be engine failiure from another source... both engines failed at the same time, which is unusual if its just a broken engine; my money is on either an electrical fault, or dare I say it, a mallicious act, maybe terrorism.

Most cases are Pilot error.
Ive been watching Air Crash Investigations on National Geographic.

Not saying this one is pilot error.
But at least everyone is off safe and the pilot is a hero ( For now ).

How can complete engine failiure be pilot error? Dont they often use Autopilot to land anyway nowadays?

I kinda see when ya coming from, but if a pilot "pressed the wrong button" for instance and it caused both engines to instantly shut down, im never boarding a plane again.

I value my life lmao

I'm sure they have a shut down sequence to turn the engines off, not just a button.

So pilot must of made a major mistake if it was his fault. Or dear we say it was tampered with, but again i'm sure something would of happened much earlier on in the flight if it was.

----------------------------------------------------------
I wonder what this does



Ooooooooooooooooooooooops

Its take off and approach they dont.

If there landing and on the glide slope it gets turned off
i think its when you see the wheels.

There are to many redundancies in modern air craft
for the engines to turn off.

It could even be something like lack of fuel.
That would give NO Power.

Time will tell.

Either way...it does seem a bit iffy...I can remember hearing somewhere that a fully laden boeing 747 at a normal cruising altitude of say 35,000 feet, would be able to glide safely for several thousand miles if its engines were to suddenly shut down

On the BBC News yesterday, they said that autopilot can land a plane with almost no need for the pilot except to keep an eye on things and intervene if there is a need to?

or about 35 - 45 mins

Autopilots can land planes, but no one would get on them
they want the human factor

Air france many moons ago, done a huge demo.
And it flew over the runway about 10ft above it.
And landed in the trees with a poof of smoke.

[youtube]tokCFOyKp2M[/youtube]

And on a lighter note

[youtube]mf9GaUMQKEM[/youtube]

If that gear wont come down there are always options
provided you have the time that is lol

[youtube]CtHW5q1DaX0[/youtube]

wow...worlds strongest car.....

BBC News Report

Some photographs - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7195804.stm