from WSJ (via Bloomberg)
By Alan Purkiss
March 4 (Bloomberg) -- A British Airways Plc 747 that flew
from Los Angeles to the U.K. on three engines on Feb. 19 had a
carbon-copy incident on its very next round flight, the Wall
Street Journal reported.
The aircraft, registered as G-BNLG, left Singapore for
London on Feb. 25 with 356 passengers and suffered an engine
failure after three and a half hours; after consulting BA's
operations center, the crew continued on three engines, landing
at London's Heathrow Airport 11 hours later, the newspaper said.
In the Feb. 19 incident, the engine on the left side next to
the fuselage failed on takeoff; it was replaced, and the
replacement failed on the Singapore-London flight, a circumstance
described by BA Spokeswoman Diana Fung as ``a strange
coincidence,'' the Journal said.
In mid-February, a European Union regulation requiring
airlines to pay compensation of as much as $788 per person to
passengers in the event of long delays or cancellations came into
effect, but BA says that had nothing to do with the decisions to
proceed with the two flights, the paper reported.
Les Dorr, a spokesman for the U.S. Federal Aviation
Administration, said the agency believed the Los Angeles flight
would have violated U.S. regulations, which require most planes
to land at the nearest suitable airport after an engine failure,
according to the Journal.
(Wall Street Journal Online 3-4)