what we see now is that this was actually a fairly major ground prang in the dark with a building partly destroyed with a fractured wing leaking fuel -

i do not know how long the pax sat on this 747 for but a full dark cabin with emergency vehicles outside dealing with damage and leaking fuel i would not be surprised if the cabin crew may have been on tenterhooks awaiting an EVAC order from the flt deck...

even with my many years of operational aviation experience i would not have been too comfy sitting on board for very long in this situation especially in the dark

i do not think for one moment the BA crew would be panicky but they certainly would be anxious due to the unknown factors occurring.

an EVAC in the dark there (the area was poorly lit) again would be undesirable but i guess the crew were monitoring this in case it was deemed necessary. even if the LHS only was used it was dark (and raining?) and could well have been chaotic despite the professionalism of BA crews.

all rather unfortunate

If you evacuate a full 747 using the slides, the chances are you will probably kill someone. Therefore you factor that into your decision making and I suspect in this case it it was considered safer for the passengers to remain on board. Had there been a fire, I would suggest the decision may have been different - but there wasn't. The option remained throughout but I consider the right decision to have been made.

Disembarking via steps away from the terminal is not the easiest thing to arrange either so there's another reason why passengers remained on board for a while.

I note that no-one was injured and I wonder why it is considered by some that escalating a situation from undesirable to hazardous-to-life is a sensible course of action?:ugh:

It was exactly the same decision as the one the flight crew took on the Qantas A380.

Fuel leaking, outside hazards no immediate severe threat so hold passengers and don't use chutes risking injury.

They got it spot on and no one injured as did the BA crew.

getting a few hundred people out of an aircraft , in the dark, remote corner of the airport, lots of emergency vehicles coming....... recipe for carnage I'd have said

I think this says a lot about BA crew actually.
Perhaps some of the cabin crew were a bit jumpy-training is all very well but some were probably very young and I doubt that -we have hit a large building and broken off the outboard wing is actually a training scenario as such.

But, as has been pointed out on here there were very very real hazards for letting people use the slides in rain and dark with airport vehicles and emergency vehicles racing to the scene is a very undesirable scenario . SO I think the cockpit crew did what airline pilots are supposed to do above all-keep a cool head and make rational decisions in difficult and trying circumstances here and as result everyone walked away. In like most pax they knew that the leaking fuel is far less of a hazard than might be imagined , most people think 'Jet Fuel' must be scary stuff when it is actually regular unleaded in the family car that's dangerous.

The cockpit must been having a real oh **** what have we done moment as well and that put more pressure on their decision making.
We all know they should not have hit it and we all know that they didn't hit ti deliberately.
I have been lucky enough pre 9-11 to get to see what its like taxying around a large airport at night and it is nothing like as straightforward as it might appear , through in an odd taxi route and some weather and I am surprised it doesn't happen more often.

So despite the criticism people should bear in mind that BA have had two very nasty incidents at Jo Burg in the last few years and no one got hurt and the reason for that is that in both cases people kept a cool head and in command of the situation .

Quote... -we have hit a large building and broken off the outboard wing is actually a training scenario as such.


I am just wondering if a 'Rapid Response Stairs Vehicle' is part of an airport's Safety Remit, and if so, what is their expected response time?

Considering it is nearly a year since this accident, most professional pilots here must wonder why there has not been any official report published into what caused the aircraft to taxy into a building.

British Airways have taken a view on this as the flight crew are back flying. If they were not to blame, who was? Far less serious accidents than this and the circumstances surrounding the chain of events are aired for the benefit of all professional crew to learn by. In this case, there does not appear to be any rush to get any information out.

If an aircraft is leaking fuel on stand, it is a normal procedure to get the passengers as soon as possible off via a rapid disembarkation. In Johannesburg the airport authorities took a very long time to respond to this accident and provide steps. The debate regarding risk of keeping the passengers on an aircraft haemorraghing fuel compared to the risk of injury evacuating can go on ad infinitum. But those dramatic comments about people being killled or seriously injured, are only meant to support the actions or inactions of the flight crew. No passengers were killed or seriously injured in a night time evacation on the stand at Phoenix a few years ago.

Pilots are only second to doctors in covering up mistakes and sticking together. "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone" seems to be the order of the day.

You can always count on the count to try and stir things up.

Give it a rest man, your opinions are so unsubstantiated that it is merely white noise

"Pilots are only second to doctors in covering up mistakes and sticking together" - any scientific or statistical evidence to back this assertion?

Last time I checked the "Just Culture" is alive and kicking amongst ourselves and we have no issue with going to print when we think somebody else might learn a thing or two from our own experiences.
You probably never read the Just Safety magazine that comes out monthly, perhaps you should. Open debate is encouraged in our airline. Thank heavens it is.

Count

Welcome back.......


Night time - do you mean this one?

http://
and as you say, onto the stand.....

Evacuation?
 

The idea of evacuating this aircraft will be debated for a long time. As a co-pilot who aspires to command in the not too distant future I'd like to think I would have behaved in the same way.

For a fuel spill on the gate rapid disembarkation (i.e., without slides) would be appropriate. For fuel leak event in a remote area then unless there was a fire then the best course of action is probably to remain on board. The key word we use is "catastrophic" and despite the nature of the accident I don't think it warranted an evacuation from either the flight deck or cabin if the cabin crew thought it was catastrophic.

Just my thoughts, I haven't seen anything specific about this incident and look forward to reading the official report when it is published.

For what it's worth, I would assume the cabin crew were experienced - this is a Worldwide route and there have been very few recruits (apart from transfers from Eurofleet). Many Worldwide crew have been flying 15 years or more.

British Airways Incident at Johannesburg
 

This was not a simple fuel leak. It was 100t of jet A1 escaping through multiple holes punched into the wing tank as a result of the wing slamming into the building. The fact there was no immediate explosion was only a matter of sheer luck. The risk of imminent fire and explosion as a result of the buildings structure (gas/electrical lines) was too significant to not warrant a speedy exit. Accepting casualties here would have been a just call. Witnessing this, If I was a passenger down the back, I would have made my way to the rear exit and evacuated myself! Wrong decision in my book to not evacuate. Very very lucky to have no post prang fire!

Saskatoon,

It's self styled experts like you that put people in danger. Believe it or not a crew has your (and their) best interests at heart and is making assessments with way more information than you have. By unilaterally taking action all you do is add risk and confuse the situation. You'd look (even more of) an idiot if you self evacuated into a pool of kerosine that the crew knew was there.

FWIW the Phoenix evac was initiated by a pax opening a door while the a/c was moving, confusing an already complex situation and necessitating some extremely prompt action from the flight crew. Helpful to the situation? No. That a/c only had a minor fault, the pax initiated evac exposed all involved to far greater risk than if they had stayed on board and allowed the crew time to troubleshoot.

Your tech knowledge is a bit lacking too, you can only put approx 53.5 tons of fuel in a 747 wing, 36 tons in the inner tank, 13.5 in the outer and 4 in the reserve. The outer was the only one breached so the max possible fuel spill was 13.5 tons but it was actually far less than that. Also kerosine (paraffin) is not as volatile as petrol, so if there is no ignition on impact there is unlikely to be one post event, especially when the fuel is leaking into grass off the taxiway. You can be damn sure the crew were getting regular updates from the fire services about the size and location of the spill.

In a nutshell, stop trying to second guess crews from a position of ignorance and let them get on with managing a situation to the best outcome without interfering.

What are you blathering about ?.
How would 100 tons of fuel find its way to a damaged wingTIP ?.

What evidence do you have, if any, to justify your claims of a massive leak.
You clearly have zero understanding of the 744 fuel system.

Which, if you understood the quality parameters of Jet A-1, and the circumstances required for a flammable mixture to form, would give you a far better explanation for the absence of any fire or explosion than "sheer luck"

Those who are proposing the 'leaking fuel' ohmygodwereallgoingtodie hypothesis may be forgetting that jet fuel is kerosine based, not gasoline based. For this they can thank Lord Brabazon of Tara, the Aviation Minister in Britain when the jet age dawned. His US counterparts wanted to use wide cut gasoline as it was more readily available, but the Brits wanted the safer fuel. Lord Brabazon invited the U.S. team to stand in a puddle of their fuel and toss lit matches into it, while he did the same with Kerosene. The U.S. team declined the offer and, safer, kerosene based fuels became standard in civilian use, although the US military persisted with wide cut gasoline until the mid 90s.

"jet fuel is kerosine based, not gasoline based"
 

The oil industry fuels guy in me cant let that ride. I know what you are trying to say and the conclusion is unchanged but the above statement is wrong - while Jet is closer in nature to typical Kerosene than Gasoline (and is often called "aviation Kerosene") they are not "based" on anything except crude oil - both Jet fuel and Gasoline are hydrocarbon based. it is simply the distillation range and flammability that differs (all flammable material are combustible but not all combustible material are flammable). Its a continuum. Sorry - cant help it.

I am glad that the crew are back flying. Given the litany of confusion about what actually happened, the multiple versions as to the class of the taxiway, and whether the LH turn TWY lights were actually on or not (yes, I know they were on AFTER) any other outcome pending the report would have been unsafe.

I understand that the airframe will never fly again.

BA Phoenix evac
 

In that video, look how many evacuees are walking away with baggage ...

Nowadays you can be sure that - in ANY evac - many of the PAX will have hand luggage with them. We have seen this in BA38 (low impact) and even in Asiana 214 (high impact).

No one listens and early, uncommanded, opening of doors does not surprise me. Frightens me, but not surprise.

Nowadays you can be sure that - in ANY evac - many of the PAX will have hand luggage with them. We have seen this in BA38 (low impact) and even in Asiana 214 (high impact).

No one listens and early, uncommanded, opening of doors does not surprise me. Frightens me, but not

I wonder, if you were in a similar situation, and your cabin bag held your passport / documents / money etc, unless there was some serious fire, whether you would gladly ditch all and run or make an effort to pick atleast the bit valuable, forget the checked in cargo ..