British Airways Incident at Johannesburg
 

starting to do the rounds on twitter

Care to elaborate?

looks like the B747 wing

from searching around on twitter and news feeds, it looks like it missed the turn on Taxiway A, for RNY03L, and continued straight on Taxiway M towards a storage and parking facility for smaller aircraft (ERJ's etc) and the wing hit adjacent buildings containing ground support vehicles maintenance facility.

* OPERATIONAL FLIGHT INFO * BA 34 0 SU 22DEC
CITY INFO HOUR LOCAL)
JNB ESTIMATED TIME OF DEPARTURE 2245
LEFT THE GATE 2229
AIRCRAFT RETURNED TO RAMP 2230
NEXT INFO WILL BE AT 0100

Doesn't seem like a drama, but then with Twatter, it will be turned into one.

looks like wing clipped building. no casualties.

thats a bit more than slight damage !

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BcH3dl4CEAApQNQ.jpg

A bit worse than I thought, thankfully no casualties on board as far as we know. Friend of mine is on board but haven't spoken to him.

Not full, apparently about 150 seats unsold.

G-BNLL has a thing for wingtips.

Air Accidents Investigation: Airbus A340-311 Boeing 747-436, 4R-ADC G-BNLL

Taxiway centerline on Mike is ~25m from the building. So assuming they were on the centerline, a good 7m of the wing plowed through the building.

G-BNLL has over 109,000 hours on the clock so chances for a write off are big. (depending on damage of course).

http://www.caa.co.za/resource%20cent...DEC%202013.pdf

CAUTION / RESTRICTION
1. ACFT to exercise caution when taxiing on TWY B southbound to THR RWY 03L due to Apron taxilane M extending from TWY B in a Southerly direction.

Bugger.....wrong taxiway?

lucky there was no fire
 

There was a considerable fuel leak. Fire dep was there quickly to hose it down.

Major damage indeed, hull loss would be my guess on such an old airframe. Quite lucky there was no fire.

Passengers were deplaned with stairs and bussed back to the terminal.

They came from the apron, and missed the turn onto B apparently. Found it hard to believe they went onto such a narrow taxiway, with that building being so close.

We departed just after it had happened, and couldn't believe the damage we saw.:rolleyes:

But then again, it was dark and the lighting there isn't very good.
Do BA's 744's have taxilights, or just turn-off lights? I remember some classics having only turn-off lights. In Africa I use the landing lights often when taxiing.

I can see 'Follow the green' being one of the recommendations from the upcoming investigation...

And an incident of this magnitude belongs in Rumours & News indeed.

So no greens on taxilane M, then? If so, pretty embarrassing incident, straying away from the greens at night... Would recommend also some 'MAX SPAN ..." markings on M

I didn't mean it like that Dibo.

JNB doesn't have that system (unless I've missed it completely).
While it could have saved the day here...

BA only have turn-off lights on the -400. However, they use the outboard landing lights during taxi to compensate for the lack of taxi lights.

Worked on the classic which never had a taxi light customer option, so I assume they decided to go without them on the -400. Just like Cathay, Lufthansa etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the wheels on the wing gear ended up in the mud.

Doesn't look like much of a centerline on that taxiway. Does BA have an Airport Moving Map installation?

Got to feel for this crew. Even if they'd missed that outhouse they'd have been in for a tight 3 point turn.
http://i56.servimg.com/u/f56/14/32/14/65/joburg10.jpg