BA Jumbo Makes Emergency Landing At Heathrow (Monday, January 31)

From the Press Association

A British Airways jumbo jet made an emergency landing at Heathrow after one of its four engines was shut down mid-flight.

The Boeing 747, which was carrying 122 passengers from Washington DC, touched down safely shortly after 8am in the third such incident in three days involving a BA aircraft.

Two Concorde flights made emergency landings over the weekend. A cockpit warning light yesterday forced one jet to return to Heathrow shortly after take off and another suffered an engine shut-down on Saturday afternoon.

Emergency services were put on stand-by this morning after the jumbo crew reported vibrations from an engine and took the decision to shut it down during the seven-hour journey across the Atlantic.

A BA spokeswoman said: "The crew decided themselves to shut down the engine - it was not a question of the engine stopping itself. The plane can fly perfectly well on three engines and it landed without incident at 8.10am."

She added the plane was being examined by maintenance engineers to pinpoint the cause of the fault.

-- Risteard Mac Thomais (uachtaran@ireland.com), January 31, 2000

Answers

Thanks, Risteard. Do you have any way of finding out what kind of engine the BA airplane has?

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), January 31, 2000.

Rachel, no I don't.

-- Risteard Mac Thomais (uachtaran@ireland.com), January 31, 2000.

Boeing 747 engines:

Pratt & Whitney PW4000 General Electric CF6-80C2 Rolls-Royce RB211-524

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), January 31, 2000.

do you have a link?

-- boop (leafyspurge@hotmail.com), January 31, 2000.

http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/Breaking_News/UK/0,2478,636428,00.html

-- Risteard Mac Thomais (uachtaran@ireland.com), January 31, 2000.

Thanks, Hawk. Given that so many incidents/accidents (including KQ431) appear to involve engine problems, it might be a good idea to start a list of airplane engines to see if there is any pattern. Then again, maybe such a list already exists.... Back to reports to FAA?

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), January 31, 2000.

link to BBC article

Warning. If you go to this site, do not look at the first photo. Or, if you do look, keep your right eye closed so you don't have to see the tail. OTOH, do see the photo farther down--my, my those Concordes are beauties. Not hard to observe that some of its designers came from the Arrow program.

I digress. The Concordes' engines were Rolls Royce Olympus, and the one engine problem was apparently caused by dust. That leads me to believe that the sand storm will be blamed for bringing down KQ431. Thoughts?

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), January 31, 2000.

Don't worry guys, it's NOT y2k.

It shouldn't be, so it isn't.

Take care

-- George (jvilches@sminter.com.ar), January 31, 2000.