22 August 1985; British Airtours 737-200; Flight 28M; Manchester Airport, England: The crew rejected the takeoff due to an uncontained engine failure. The failure led to a punctured fuel tank and a fire that spread to the cabin. The accident killed 53 of 131 passengers and two of six crew members.
Tyro is quite right to pick up on this point as this flight was operated by Pilots seconded from BA mainline and maintained by Engineers directly employed by BA. That is not to say I am attempting to allocate blame in any way towards those Pilots or Engineers - it is just a matter of record.
Many lessons were learned from that terrible accident and changes were made that exist to this day.
The position of seats by emergency exits was changed. Also the actions of the Pilots during an RTO was changed in that in a headwind the aircraft should be turned towards a fire, and conversely in a tailwind.
Some recommendations were made I believe in regard to the 'fire retardation' properties of cabin materials. I was given to understand at the time that these recommendations were not followed for all the usual reasons (I could of course be wrong)
Regards
Exeng