Double Engine Failure Cripples British Airways Flight #38 | Mayday | On The Move

january 2008 the boeing triple seven is the gold standard for commercial aviation for more than ten years the plane has logged two million flights without a single major accident clear deland but less than a thousand feet above london's heathrow airport all that changed hey i can't get power on the engines what do you mean it's not giving me power this can't be happening i thought if i don't do anything then everybody will die mayday mayday speedbird speed whatever brought down one of the world's most technologically advanced airplanes can't be found at the crash site they had the pilots they had the passengers they had the aircraft they had everything there except the thing that caused it that had disappeared as if by magic [Music] british airways flight 38 a 10 and a half hour journey from beijing to london captain peter burkel has made this trip many times before i was operating that route a lot it was one of my favorite flights because it was daylight you could you could see the views the whole way along the route burkhill and first officer john coward both have thousands of hours flying the triple seven under their belts it's a joy to fly she handles really well she's got modern equipment the computers are easy to use she's got the range the ability to do short haul as efficiently as long haul for these two as for many pilots a day on the job consists of sitting in the cockpit for long hours as computers fly the plane powered by two massive rolls-royce engines the boeing triple seven is one of the safest planes in the industry nick harris is flying back to london after a business trip to china the good thing was it seemed to be that we were coming in early into heathrow i was looking forward getting home to the family flight 38's destination is heathrow airport one of the busiest international airports in the world nestled in the southwest corner of london it's bordered by the a30 motorway people who live in the nearby neighborhood of hounslow are well accustomed to the sound of jets taking off and landing the area's tightly packed houses come into distant view for british airways flight 38 the autopilot is in control as the crew lines up with runway 27 left as it nears the ground the plane is buffeted by some high winds just a little turbulence it's the first wrinkle in an otherwise smooth journey that's not me that's the odder throttles doing their thing we were picking up wind gusts to about 20 to 30 knots and we were fully aware um that the order throttles would be able to cope with that so they'd be moving up and down quite a lot you might want to keep the autopilot on a little longer than usual to let the wind come down we'll do in turbulent weather the autopilot can make faster adjustments to keep a plane level than the pilots 1200 feet above ground two minutes before landing coward takes over flying the plane you have control just as the two pilots had planned i have control i had a few seconds to spare before clearance to landing and i was just tidying up my map charts clear deland two seven left speed bird 38 i remember looking out to see if our our gate was available 500 feet 500 feet stable well shorter suddenly there's a problem pete i can't get power on the entrance it's not giving me power what's going on what do you mean i was looking at the engine instruments and they didn't make sense to me because we were asking for full power but the engine instruments were not giving us any power at all what's going on flight 38 is crippled in the worst way imaginable it looks like we have double engine failure with neither engine providing enough power the jet won't make it to the airport with 152 people on board flight 38 is falling toward london with only seconds until it hits the ground this can't be happening this is one of the most modern jets in the world in the cabin there's no indication that anything's gone wrong on approach to land everybody seemed relaxed in the cabin we're just looking forward to landing air speed low air speed low air low and now i was looking at our impact point i could see a set of buildings around the hatton cross area and a petrol station i just knew if we were hitting those then it was certain a 100 fatalities at that point i felt the weight of my four bars on my shoulder i am the captain if i don't do anything then everybody will die this close to the ground burkhill doesn't have many options he could take back control of the plane from coward but doesn't think that's the right move first decision really was to not take control i remember looking over at john he was still flying the plane well good he's doing a good job he's doing what i need him to do burkhill knows that even if they managed to clear hounslow the jet could still smash into the busy a30 motorway or the antennas at the edge of the airport i thought about raising the gear that's the biggest drag on a commercial jet but i needed the gear to crash on we were going to impact and that was going to take the brunt of the impact so i had to leave the gear with a down imminent burkill has only one move left but it comes with enormous risk i knew i had about 15 seconds to make a huge decision i needed to get past those buildings it was obvious to me that i needed to raise the flaps retracting the flaps will reduce drag but also lift the plane will fly further but drop faster burkhill must determine which is more important i wanted to discuss it with the crew but this was all in a matter of seconds i remember holding that lever for a fraction of a second he hopes this move will help his plane avoid catastrophe the effect was immediate now burkhill makes the announcement every pilot dreads mayday mayday speedbird speedburn it was hard very hard i remember the couple of impacts and the noise the landing was hard just a huge bang the noise bits falling off the ceiling then i also became a passenger because we were now in an uncontrolled aeroplane we were sliding along the ground and i didn't know what we were going to hit next and then i thought about my wife and kids and i said goodbye to them [Music] the lights went out i could hear the wreckage breaking up and then we stopped when we actually stopped i was surprised that i was still there and then i looked round the flight deck and i i was more surprised to see that all three of us were unscarred everybody says and i quickly became the captain again the crew switches off the fuel apu fire switch hydraulic and electrical systems control switches cut check this complete i then had to look after my survivors um i thought 20 were dead because this aircraft was broken up this is an emergency evacuate evacuate the air stewardess then took control completely now she opened the door i smelt the fuel we should hurry and realize that we need to get off this aircraft the big danger now is fire having survived the landing passengers could be killed if flames sweep through the jet jump jump i left all my luggage and just got myself down the slide jump let's get out of here i went through the galley and checked the the right hand aisle and i was surprised to see nobody there despite berkeley's fears there are no casualties outside in the cool january air the scale of the disaster is clear the right wheel had actually been ripped off during the impact the engines were were just sad they were all ripped apart the cowlings were were ripped off and the engines were half buried it wasn't an aircraft anymore i now start to realize that we've been involved in a major accident i saw the damage to the undercarriage and to the wing the plane narrowly missed the a30 and the antennas at the foot of the runway it could have been total devastation the impact had been on anything other than soft mud and grass the likelihood of a fire was immense given the amount of damage it's incredible that only 47 people were injured i felt quite lucky that i was still alive it was quite a surreal feeling [Music] from china british prime minister gordon brown praises burkhill and the crew i think it's right to pay tribute to the calmness and professionalism of the british airways staff the captain of peter berkel for what he achieved in engineering a landing that protected lives investigators have some early hunches about what caused the engines to fail they also have plenty of clues but a key piece of evidence is already missing he throws emergency planning swung into action the crash of british airways flight 38 dominates the news it's the most serious accident at heathrow in 30 years heathrow airport is a very busy airport it is the main airport in the uk so anything that happens in heathrow airport immediately hits the media more significantly the triple seven is one of the world's most modern and reliable jets the accident unsettles the airline industry the triple seven is as safe as an airplane can be it had such a superb safety record what on earth happened you don't like not knowing whether it might happen to the rest of your fleet [Music] investigators quickly arrive on the scene phil slight is the lead engineer for britain's aaib the air accidents investigation branch when you first approach an accident site like this the first thought you've got is where do i start the landman's about a thousand feet short of the runway the landing gears pushed up through the wings the nose landing gear collapsed just hours after the crash investigators interview the crew captain peter burkhill has a first-hand account of what happened i think i wanted to talk about it because i knew of the innocence of the whole crew this isn't our fault we didn't do anything wrong but the engines weren't giving us any more power well it looks like we have double engine failure we tried to give them more power manually but there was nothing berkel explains that something had caused both of the jets rolls-royce engines to roll back at the same time robbing the aircraft of power acceleration when you hear something of a double engine failure you start looking at what's common what could cause both engines to fail at the same time so our first thoughts were that it may have run out of fuel a fuel shortage is rare but it has happened before in 1983 a boeing 767 ran out of fuel flying over central canada a mistake in converting between metric and imperial measurements left the plane with much less fuel than the crew thought at 26 000 feet they lost power to both engines the captain was able to glide the plane to a safe landing at an abandoned airbase in the case of flight 38 this theory is immediately questioned fuel has a certain odor anyone who has worked with an aircraft will know the distinctive smell of jet a1 fuel there was certainly a lot of fuel leaking from the aircraft from the ruptures to the bottom of the engines when we arrived on site a check of the plane's dipsticks confirms two of the tanks did in fact have fuel so we knew that there was plenty of fuel on board this aircraft to complete the flight there remain several other possible explanations for such a loss of power and investigators must tackle them all there is great confidence that the mystery can be solved as any and every piece of evidence investigators could ever want is readily available they have access to the pilot the crew and most importantly the entire plane we were quite fortunate to have the amount of data that we had on this aircraft because the aircraft remained intact we were able to interrogate lots of computers and also get lots of data from the recorders additionally we had data external to the aircraft such as radar data and also the radio transmissions as well mark ford retrieves the plane's flight data recorders which promise to give investigators important clues he has another resource the qar or quick access recorder while the black boxes are in the rear of the plane the qar is a data recorder in the front used mainly for diagnostics it does have an advantage over the flight record though in that it has a greater memory capacity and can record additional parameters over and above those available on the fly recorder you can recover the data from a quick access recorder within a matter of minutes in some cases speed altitude control settings cockpit conversations in all the various recorders have preserved 1400 different pieces of data which should help the investigators close the case but when they study the qar what they find is chilling the quickx recorder data stopped about 45 seconds prior to the accident itself initial thoughts were that there was an electrical problem possibly that had affected not only the qar but possibly the engines as well the triple 7 is one of the latest advances to computer-assisted airplanes pilots don't directly control the plane instead their inputs are sent to a computer those signals are then relayed to the engines flaps and other systems on the aircraft pete i can't get power on the engines a massive failure of the plane's information systems could explain why the engine stopped working perhaps the computers that control them froze farnborough is home to the aaib the flight data recorder has been sent here for analysis an electrical problem would be recorded on this device but interpreting the information will take some time time investigators don't have [Applause] there are hundreds of triple sevens landing every day they need to find answers before whatever brought down flight 38 strikes again while they wait authorities turn their attention to the fuel recovered from the ruined plane a bad batch of fuel could have deprived the aircraft of power just when it needed it most the fuel can be contaminated in many different ways it can be particle contamination it can be biological contamination and they can get into filters to restrict the flow we took several samples from various points within the fuel system so not only from the fuel tank itself but also from remnants within fuel lines and also within various fuel components we managed to trace the fuel back through the documentation to a shipment of jet a1 which came from south korea and that was shipped across in a tanker to china and was then transported by pipeline to beijing airport we compared it with over 1 200 other batches of fuel in the uk and it came out to be very good investigators next consider the possibility of a blockage in the fuel tanks they discover some bizarre evidence several small pieces of tape are recovered along with something else when we're in the fuel tanks we did find a few small articles one of them was a red scraper the items were likely left over from when the plane was built seven years ago but while they're peculiar there's no indication that any of them played a role in bringing down the plane obviously it's not ideal to find anything within a fuel tank we obviously looked to see whether this would have had an effect on the fuel flow to the engines the items were so small they would not have caused a restriction as the search for answers continues a puzzling find surfaces less than three years before the heathrow crash another triple seven suffered a serious mid-air problem after taking off in perth australia a malaysian passenger jet was climbing through 38 000 feet when suddenly the plane's autopilot pitched the nose up and climbed steeply calamity was only averted when the pilot took manual control of the jet they did manage to get it safely back to base the investigators established that this was a computer problem british aviation authorities consider that the electronic brain of one of the world's most reliable jets might be faulty the malaysian airlines aircraft was really quite an unnerving one the investigators sort of pulled out the files on it and started looking over it to try and get some clues did we have a problem with the electronic control system causing the engines to roll back if flaws are found with flight 38's computers it means triple sevens around the world could all be disasters in the making this thought hangs heavily over the industry when the readout of the plane's flight data recorder is conducted in farnborough investigators learned that the crash could have been much worse there was very little they could actually have done it looks like we have double engine thing there was only 30 seconds between when they were fully aware of what was going on airspeed low and the accident was inevitable records show that soon after the engines failed the plane started falling faster than 1800 feet a minute a very steep descent but lack of power was only one factor working against the crew they had extended their flaps on descent it helps control the plane at lower speeds by increasing lift but the extended flaps create drag which slows the plane down it takes more power to keep the plane flying with a wider wing i needed to raise the flaps i knew that by raising it one notch to flap 25 would be the right thing to do to reduce the drag that's what i had to do and what he did here gave them a few extra feet had the flowers been left at flaps 30 the aircraft would have struck the ground just before a set of ils antennas the plane then would have slammed into the antennas sustaining even more damage and increasing the chances of serious injuries for their efforts berkel and his team are considered heroes flying is about teamwork and we had an outstanding team there is no doubt without the flight crew's actions flight 38's landing would have been a catastrophe at the recordings as they continue examining data from the flight data recorders continue right to the moment of impact investigators are no closer to solving the case analysis of the flight recorder didn't identify any particular fault with the aircraft electrical system that would have resulted in both engines rolling back they are at least able to determine why no data was found on the quick access recorder for the last 45 seconds of the flight it's not an electrical fault as they first feared the the 45 second delay in the qr recording was a result of the fact that the qar doesn't record in real time it buffers the data and then we'll record approximately 45 seconds later with all the information from the plane's various data recorders now collected investigators have a precise picture of what happened the jet was on the proper course as it made its approach to land when things went horribly wrong at 720 feet the right engine rolled back seven seconds later the left engine rolled back the auto throttle attempted to command greater thrust that's not me that's the odd throttle but the engines didn't respond i can't get power on the engines while electrical and computer problems are ruled out as causes of the crash the flight data recorders do point investigators to the likely source of the problem the two most significant parameters from the quickx recorder were the fuel metering valves both those valves indicated that they had opened to their fully open position the plane's computers were calling for as much fuel from the tanks as possible the valves were fully open but not nearly enough fuel was reaching the engines a plane with plenty of fuel and a working computer system still crash-landed and investigators can't determine why they focus on the weather on the day of the accident it was a very cold air mass over siberia so we were aware of the cold conditions but the flight was expected to be smooth and and also quick the plane's path took them high over russia the outside temperature went as low as minus 74 degrees centigrade it's a potentially dangerous temperature if not monitored closely cold air masses you have to be very aware of the fuel temperatures when fuel starts to freeze it produces wax as the fuel temperature drops the wax becomes greater within the fuel itself until it comes to a point where it can no longer flow we have a fuel temperature gauge on on the flight deck which is monitored all times and i personally look at that every time i do a fuel check which minimum is is once an hour basically you don't want to get it below minus 34 degrees centigrade while they were cold the temperatures never dipped into the danger zone where the fuel could wax and clog the system and the fuel temperature increased significantly as the jet approached london we were coming through 20 000 feet and i remember seeing minus 20 degrees centigrade so it already started to warm up another potential cause of the crash is ruled out investigators are now running out of possible explanations and the expectation from the media and also from aviation experts was that we would have the answer within days but there was no comment today about the ongoing investigation it very quickly became apparent that that would not be the case they had the pilots they had the passengers they had the aircraft they had everything there except the thing that caused it that had disappeared as if by magic despite mountains of data and physical evidence at their disposal investigators are still unable to say what caused the crash of a british airways triple seven at heathrow airport they turned to a failure of the fuel delivery system as a culprit to prove it was responsible they need to pinpoint anything out of the ordinary about flight 38's journey on january the 17th 2008. it's a daily flight operating from beijing to heathrow we wanted to work out what was unique about this flight why this flight in particular [Music] if you've got a very puzzling incident like the triple seven accident at heathrow you're going to mine all the data you can just uh put them over there for now so we approached many operators to obtain some data of previous flights so that we could then do a comparison flight data is collected from companies around the world we had something like 144 000 flights in all but it will take months of work to analyze this enormous volume of information to study flight 38's fuel system more closely huge sections of it are brought to the aaib hangar and reassembled it allowed us to basically just sit there and look at it and to brainstorm and come up with ideas as to what might have caused it mcdermott and his team consider all possibilities from design flaws to a malfunction specific to this aircraft the examination comes up empty we carried out an exhaustive and very thorough inspection and testing of the fuel system and we find nothing wrong frustrated investigators are at a dead end we kept going through this cycle we kept going back over what we've done before had we missed something and every time we went back over we kept coming back to no there was no trouble with the plane's computers it had plenty of fuel and no problems with the fuel itself but somehow when it was most vital the engines didn't get the fuel they needed the aaib detectives have run out of suspects there was no clear explanation nothing that you'd seen before [Music] in any airplane let alone the triple seven could have explained this now they turn away from the clues they have to those they don't phil started coming out of her mantra which was a quote from sherlock holmes whatever is left however improbable must be the cause has to be in this case we always keep coming back to what's there what could have been there that's not there now and we come back to ice suspicion that the cause of the accident was ice crew stronger and stronger but investigators are faced with a nearly impossible task how can they prove that ice had brought down the plane when the evidence they need would have melted by the time they arrived three months after the crash brian mcdermott flies to seattle to work with engineers at boeing the company that built the triple seven if ice brought down flight 38 they need to prove how and why we took the pipes from the right side of the fuel system and those pipes and those couplings were used on the test rig at boeing ice in the fuel lines has long been a concern for jets of all kinds but decades ago engineers found an ingenious way to deal with the ice forming in the fuel of passenger jets the heart of the system is the fuel oil heat exchanger or fohe cold fuel runs through thin tubes which are surrounded by the hot oil used to lubricate the engines the purpose of a fuel heater is to heat the fuel up to prevent icing of the delicate fuel control system the fohe is designed to prevent exactly the problem investigators suspect crippled flight 38 but it's also a potential bottleneck in the system during the field testing we were looking to establish where we could get a restriction that would restrict the fuel flow to 6000 pounds per hour and the only place that we could get such a restriction occurring was on the face of the fuel or heat exchanger investigators have to prove three things first that substantial amounts of ice can accumulate inside the fuel pipes second that the ice can suddenly be released and finally prove that it can block a device specifically designed to melt it we use different methods of controlling the environment around the the pipes that range from dry ice to cold fuel and to hot air to simulate the environment around the pipes that the aircraft experienced during the flight after each fuel cooling test investigators look inside the pipes for ice but they can never get much ice to form let alone block the fuel lines the fuel temperature was -30 degree centigrade very little ice would stick to the inside of the fuel pipes investigators know the temperature on the accident flight didn't get much colder so how had the ice formed we still hadn't answered the question of where does the ice come from in the first place and indeed was it ice or was there something else that we've missed surprisingly when the fuel temperatures are warmer the breakthrough arrives if you have water in the fuel then that water will freeze and form ice crystals and then when the temperature gets to about minus degrees centigrade then those ice crystals will start to stick together will also stick to the inside of the pipes below -20 any ice crystals in the fuel are too cold to attach to the pipes but in the sticky range between -20 and -8 centigrade slushy ice forms and sticks to the sides of the fuel pipes so when we demonstrated that eyes could actually build up and grow onto the walls of the fuel pipes there was a certain amount of surprise as to how much could actually grow now we're getting somewhere well the question for us at this stage was how could that ice come off the pipes investigators think they have the smoking gun but they still can't prove how a small bit of ice could bring down a 200 million dollar plane they continue analyzing thousands of comparative flights to see what made flight 38 unique but after seven months they still can't crack the case from 35 000 rolls-royce powered flights it was less than one percent it had the same features as the accident flight then on november the 26th 2008 more than 10 months after the crash the importance of finding an answer is underscored when the elusive culprit strikes again another triple seven runs into trouble 39 000 feet above the united states when one of its engines simply stops working fortunately in that case the engine recovered and the aircraft landed safely at atlanta even though it didn't result in an accident it reinforces concerns that there's a potentially dangerous flaw on every triple seven around the world the incident captures the attention of the british airways crash investigators [Applause] the delta shanghai flight really was investigated with huge interest the engines were rolls royce engines of the same type so they immediately went looking for evidence of the same problem and in fact they do find important similarities between the delta airliner and british airways flight 38. the aircraft had operated a long sector from shanghai and china to atlanta the fuel temperatures were within the sticky range that we had defined during the research we were able to see that the reaction of the engine was very similar to that of the triple seven at heathrow later examination of the delta flight shows no evidence of any electronic mechanical or fuel system problems strongly suggesting that the culprit was indeed ice we heard about the delta flight we were more convinced another that we were on the right track mcdermott and the investigators at boeing in seattle continue their testing it's been a year since the accident and the problem hasn't been found or fixed they've run hundreds of simulations and spent millions of dollars they still can't get the ice in the fuel lines to clog the fuel oil heat exchanger and cause the kind of blockage that brought down flight 38 we came to a stage where we had not actually come up with what had caused this accident at this time the media and also the general public there was a bit of unrest as to why we had not yet come up with an answer industry pressure to resolve this case is intensifying investigators still need to know what made flight 38 different from thousands of others that had flown under similar conditions to find out they retrace every moment of flight 38's journey the voyage from beijing involved a gradual climb a steady cruise and a gradual descent the fuel temperatures fell and rose accordingly causing ice to accumulate in the fuel lines that ice posed no danger unless it was released now investigators study the fuel flow and find that it was kept steady for most of the flight the autopilot maintained constant speed and low power for hours never demanding an abrupt increase in engine power until just before they reached the runway the approaching to heathrow was quite a turbulent approach and the engines were demanding various levels of thrust power it's not me that's the other throttle is doing that thing and there were four changes in fuel flow one of which was a very high fuel flow of around about 12 to 13 000 pounds per hour demanded a closer review of the american delta flight reveals that its engine rolled back under the same circumstances a sudden demand for power after a long period of consistent speed investigators are now set to duplicate these precise conditions they hope that by reproducing the moments just before landing which was the only part of the flight where the crew suddenly required more power they may finally get the answer they're looking for the problem that we were looking at is very very difficult to replicate and during what was one of the last tests we actually managed to get all the elements together after simulating running engines at constant speed investigators increased the power we allowed the ice to accumulate for three hours and then the flow rate was increased what happens next breaks the case wide open in boeing's seattle lab investigators sudden demand for more engine power causes the fuel pressure downstream of the fuel oil heat exchanger to drop dramatically and when investigators examine this vital component we then saw that ice had formed across the face of it soft ice that had formed deep inside the fuel lines broke free when the pressure was abruptly increased it restricted the flow of fuel to the engines investigators have finally found the achilles heel hidden deep inside the triple seven the tubes that bring the fuel through the fohe jut out just above the container of hot oil it's just a few millimeters but was enough to prevent the ice from coming in contact with the hot surface below and melting now the ice doesn't totally restrict the fuel flowing through it it has some porosity so the fuel will continue to flow through but the flow rate is much lower than it should be in all of the tests only one gave investigators the result they were looking for the one that exactly matched the journey of flight 38 while the plane flew over russia water in the fuel turned to ice at -20 it began to build up along the inside of the pipes the steady speed of the aircraft ensured this accumulation was never interrupted then as the plane approached heathrow turbulence resulted in the first demand for power since much earlier in the flight and things cascaded into a serious problem you might want to keep the odd planet unusual the gushing fuel washed the ice through the fuel system until it built up against the face of the fohe with disastrous results pete i can't get power on the entrance it's not giving me power facing a threat no one knew existed mayday speedbird the pilots didn't have a chance to solve the problem but why had the american delta crew been able to clear the blockage while the british airways flight ended in near catastrophe it's discovered that after just a few seconds of reducing engine power to idle the blockage in the fohe clears but this maneuver was not available to the british airways pilots because they were so close to the ground soon after the seattle tests rolls-royce redesigned the fuel oil heat exchanger so what rolls royce did was to actually remove those protruding tubes so you now have a flush face and they found that if they flatten the surface even if ice crystals did form on the fuel they'd go straight down the holes in the block very very easy fix other aircraft manufacturers are ordered to ensure that their systems aren't vulnerable to the same problem peter burkhill john coward and the rest of the crew of flight 38 received the british airways safety medal for their performance during the accident it's the company's highest honor crew have been presented with an unprecedented failure and they did the best they could in the time that they had available the crew did as good a job as they could and since they really only had about 30 seconds to think about what they were going to do about this they couldn't have done any better than they did the ice that brought down one of the world's most sophisticated airplanes was gone by the time investigators showed up weird thing about this investigation was that the culprit had fled the scene the inquiry into what happened consumed thousands of hours of manpower and cost millions of dollars these people really pulled out the stops to find out and the reason we have to know with unrelenting diligence and a little inspiration from sherlock holmes the mystery was finally solved whatever is left however improbable must be the cause [Music] you

Channel: On The Move

Views: 551,214

Keywords: on the move, cars, planes, trains, documentary, documentaries, full length documentaries, plane documentary, mayday series, mayday, plane disasters, airport, runway, plane pilot, pilot, hd documentary, 2021 documentary, united airlines, plane crash, air accident, air crash, air disaster, plane accident, air emergency, plane disaster, plane emergency, british airways

Id: XxEaeUW7yso

Length: 45min 3sec (2703 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 21 2021