First Principal
thanks for the legal article; I didn’t realise that there had been so many “get it back to base” BAitis incidents which lead to the conclusion that the LAX engine surge incident with an eventual landing at MAN after declaring a Mayday should never have happened if BA management had been sufficiently overseen by the CAA.
With regard to NO and SOP; a couple of years after Staines I was on my annual route check with one of the witnesses at the Lane Inquiry.
This was during the continuous descent trails at Heathrow and at a time where we were attempting to reduce the Landing approach configuration and stabilised point from 3,000ft to 1,000ft with ATC asking us to maintain 180 knots to the OM.
The proceeding Alitalia DC 8 did not comply which found me initiating a missed approach from above 2,000ft which didn’t go too well. Iirc it was full power which the captain did under BEA monitored approach whilst I rotated the aircraft to a defined pitch attitude; having been brought up with the philosophy that the decision height was never to be breached it was rather brisk; my next call was for flaps and undercarriage- don’t remember which sequence- but presume it was the flaps; when I checked the speed it had reduced significantly and fearing a stall warning I considered calling for the gear but I would have then had the gear warning horn! I then thought f@ck it (I’m from Essex) and did then then unthinkable for a second officer in BEA and lowered the nose to accelerate. (The Trident was well on the back side of the drag curve during approach). It all went smooth after that; I got a standard from either Ken or Brian in the debrief and nothing was said about my go around.
‘The point being that Glen was ex Tridents and I would guess that I wasn’t the first pilot to modify the missed approach procedure (it had happened with a T3 at Madrid which was well publicised as the aircraft had diverted after loosing an engine out of Malaga without checking the WAT limits for approach climb).
It all comes back to the tail (operators and constructors) wagging the dog (the authorities) and is not unique to the UK.