Originally Posted by
WHBM
Very indirectly, 'PI was one of the two Tridents which had the tail scythed off by the crashing BKS Ambassador at Heathrow. Unlike the other one, it was repaired in a major job. Between that and Staines it was in a Heathrow hangar having a check when a Comet on engine test close outside had the wrong chocks applied, overrode them, and lunged forward bringing the hangar doors down on the tail. Repaired again, an extraordinarily unlucky aircraft.
All true, but it's still not immediately obvious what the connection is between Papa India and the Munich disaster, unless it's just a case of sitting on reports about precursor incidents. Incidentally, in my BEA/BA days, I shared an office briefly with the chap who had been Station Engineer at MUC at the time.
I believe in the first days after Staines there was much checking of records to see if a mechanical failure from the repairs might have happened.
It's a standard procedure in any airline to check when any maintenance last occurred on an accident aircraft. I remember being at work when the news came in about the Erebus ANZ DC-10 (which BA did the engineering for at LHR) and the understandable relief when it was established that we hadn't had any involvement with that particular aircraft for some weeks.