Oops - Accident Involving 777 at Heathrow

Plavt · Post by **Plavt** » Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:46 am

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7194086.stm

ben02 · Post by **ben02** » Fri, 18 Jan 2008 1:38 am

Plavt wrote:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7194086.stm

pretty lucky that there were no casualties..

durain · Post by **durain** » Fri, 18 Jan 2008 7:54 pm

will have to wait for the AAIB report on what actually happened. some said it was computer (BSoD?), and some said it was bird in the engine. interesting to find out as the 777 use fly-by-wire.

sorry... AAIB is the Air Accidents Investigation Branch for UK. similar to the NTSB - National Transportation Safety Board for USA.

Plavt · Post by **Plavt** » Fri, 18 Jan 2008 8:14 pm

I agree with durain that we will have to wait for conclusions but somehow I doubt if it was anything to do with a bird-strike (although it may have been).

Here's a consideration;
This is the first time an aircraft of this type has been involved in any serious incident; the craft was designed by computer and has been in service since 1995. Singapore Airlines has several which I have flown in and it is popular with pilots along with being too-advanced for many airports, so much so that some features are rarely if ever used.

However, I think this may only amplify a point made about software; sometimes a 'bug' will not show up for years possibly with disastrous consequence

durain · Post by **durain** » Fri, 18 Jan 2008 11:38 pm

lots of people are looking for information about the 777 crash, so much so that the Professional Pilots Rumour Network (http://www.pprune.org/forums/) server is overloaded! i am getting the message "The server is too busy at the moment. Please try again later."

Plavt · Post by **Plavt** » Sat, 19 Jan 2008 12:24 am

Durain,
Just leave them to it, as you know accident investigations usually take months (Remember the TWA crash involving a 747?). Meanwhile have a read up on the 777. Here's a good site by Capt Lim a retired MAS 777 pilot;

http://www.askcaptainlim.com

Plavt · Post by **Plavt** » Sat, 19 Jan 2008 12:28 am

Let's hope we are not in for a spate of mishaps;

http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM ... IU9yg0-6Bw

durain · Post by **durain** » Sat, 19 Jan 2008 5:26 am

Plavt wrote: http://www.askcaptainlim.com

i cant believe the name of the domain

anyway, now it seems it was the co-pilot that landed the 777. no surprise there really, as i have seen a lot of take off and landing are done by co-pilot. respect to them.

jencrs · Post by **jencrs** » Sun, 20 Jan 2008 9:16 am

durain wrote:and some said it was bird in the engine

Doubt if it was a bird in the engine, as that would only affect a single engine, and the 777 is able to operate with just 1 engine. Heck it can even take off on the power of a single engine. So it wouldn't have affected the landing that much.

Saw it on the news that preliminary findings suggest that both engines failed to respond. I'm not sure if that actually means that both the engines were shut down, or that it was somehow just stuck at idle thrust, or whatever thrust it was at when the malfunctioned happened.

They were really lucky in a way. The malfunction apparently happened 2 miles from the airport. That translates to about 600 feet from the ground, and that's less that a minute to touchdown under normal circumstances. With no power, they would have just seconds to react, as the plane would drop like a rock with full flaps and gears extended. If it happened further away, which would mean that they were higher, there would almost certainly be fatalities.

Plavt · Post by **Plavt** » Sun, 20 Jan 2008 4:28 pm

For the present nobody knows exactly what caused the crash but what is certain is the engines failed to respond to demand for thrust.

There is no way I can be certain but I think one possibility is this could be a software failure, all software has bugs and sometimes the bug does not show up for years.

A daunting thought and there is no conclusive evidence as yet. The investigation may well uncover something that has not happened before - a very good reason to maintain a human presence on the flight deck. Looks like jencrs and colleagues will be in a job for a while yet.

durain · Post by **durain** » Sun, 20 Jan 2008 6:59 pm

fly-by-wire and all the gizmo will not replace human in the cockpit.

i told them not to upgrade it to windows vista!

Post by **sundaymorningstaple** » Sun, 20 Jan 2008 7:13 pm

Plavt · Post by **Plavt** » Sun, 20 Jan 2008 7:20 pm

durain wrote:fly-by-wire and all the gizmo will not replace human in the cockpit.

i told them not to upgrade it to windows vista!

As a parallel, I was once on a train traveling from Brighton to London when the driver couldn't open the doors at a station. The reason? The software was Windows 95 with IK of memory! Your joke could be nearer to the truth than you imagine.

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Oops - Accident Involving 777 at Heathrow

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