Old B747SP incident in Buenos Aries
After dinner with friends last night the gentleman told me about a flight he made out of BA - (destined for NY I think) On takeoff they lost two to on one side, in addition to flap damage due to heavy bird strikes..
It became a serious challenge to maintain control of the very heavy aircraft, reconfigure fuel weights and dump until they were down to weight. As I understand it at one point a third engine also lost power but was recovered, The guy sitting next to my friend in First was a senior executive with overall responsibility for flight safety and ops responsibilities for an American Airline, He very quickly became convinced that they were going down but did not choose to tell my friend the bad news not knowing what his reaction would be.
After some five hours of flying around getting reconfigured and discussing potential outcomes, they returned to make a safe landing back at BA. The now "two best friends" met up for a further two days of de-stressing and at that time, he gave my friend the news that during the flight he was convinced they were not going to make it. Said friend I understand was quite happy not to have known the potential outcome.
Now here's the sting, I can find no reference to this incident and I have looked in the PPrune archive, on various websites, and on the NTSB web site (I think Panam was mentioned) and date in the 1980's possibly around 1985. and found nothing.
Does anyone have any knowledge of said incident? or information, possibly a report?, I understand that certain issues of this type could be buried in the long grass by certain airlines not wanting bad publicity, who knows. I will be seeing my friend in a few days time and I might have a little more detail, but as a starter for 10, here we are. I would like to continue our discussion with a little more knowledge since he seems to be laying something to rest.
Your mission, should you accept it, etc, etc....
With thanks,
IG