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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
Pilots fear bombs and ground collisions, sure, but what are the other scenarios that fill them with dread?
By Patrick Smith
Read more: Technology & Business, Business, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot
Jan. 25, 2008 | On Jan. 17, a British Airways Boeing 777 arriving from Beijing landed short of the runway -- crashed, if you prefer -- at London's Heathrow airport. It was the first serious accident involving a 777 since the type entered service 13 years ago. Reportedly -- and this is far from a known fact -- the plane lost power in both engines while maneuvering on approach. The crew made an immediate turn toward the runway and managed to glide to a semi-intact touchdown just inside the airport boundary. It could have been much, much worse.
Before getting to the how and why, allow me a moment to critique the media's handling of the event.
Coverage was more or less as expected, which is to say misleading at best and embarrassing at worst. The networks trundled out their "aviation experts," while the newspapers did their usual hatchet job, garbling facts and turning a complicated incident into a silly caricature. (Alan Levin's analysis for USA Today tops a short list of decent efforts.) The Associated Press peppered its stories with gratuitous quotes from passengers, including a fellow who had this to say following the evacuation of all 152 people from the badly damaged plane: "I didn't speak to the pilot, but I saw him, and he looked very pale."
Really, you mean he didn't stop to chat? And I love that, "the pilot," as if there's one guy sitting up there by himself. For the record, there would have been a minimum of three pilots on the flight deck -- a captain and two first officers. The 777 is technically a two-pilot aircraft, but long-haul international flights carry one or two relief pilots in addition. All of these pilots are fully qualified to operate the plane in any regime of flight, and any one of them could have been at the controls at the time of the emergency, depending whose turn it was for that segment. I take it the passenger was referring to the captain? (And of course he looked pale ... he was British!)
Anyway, enough harping on reporters. The more pressing matter is, what the hell happened?
I wish I could tell you, and although people are hoping for a neat little explanation, there isn't much to go on. Neither the airline nor investigators have revealed any details. It will likely be many months before official findings are released; jumping to conclusions this early in the game is a bad idea. Just the same, I can't deny there is a 700,000-pound question hanging in the air, as it were: How can a jetliner -- any jetliner -- suffer a malfunction of both engines simultaneously?
Early speculation focuses on the possibility of a malfunctioning engine control computer or auto-throttle system. A 777's engines are controlled and monitored by an array of electronic boxes, and it's conceivable that something went awry. Indications are that the engines did not fail outright; rather, an uncommanded thrust reduction occurred when the plane was very close to the ground, leaving the crew insufficient time to recover.
But allow me to present one other potential culprit that the average passenger is unlikely to consider: birds. That's right, birds. What happened at Heathrow might be totally unrelated, but this is worth discussing because, frankly, I think we're lucky to have escaped one or more large-scale, bird-related accidents in recent years.
Bird strikes, as they're called, are fairly common and seldom harmful (unless, of course, you're talking from the bird's point of view). I've experienced many strikes in the course of my flying career. The damage in each case was a minor dent or superficial crease, if anything at all. Aircraft components are built to tolerate such impacts. I've seen videos of bird carcasses being fired from a sort of chicken cannon to test the resistance of windshields, intakes and so forth. Occasionally, however, strikes can be serious, or even deadly -- especially when engines are involved.
