British Airways Incident at Johannesburg
 

starting to do the rounds on twitter

Care to elaborate?

looks like the B747 wing

from searching around on twitter and news feeds, it looks like it missed the turn on Taxiway A, for RNY03L, and continued straight on Taxiway M towards a storage and parking facility for smaller aircraft (ERJ's etc) and the wing hit adjacent buildings containing ground support vehicles maintenance facility.

* OPERATIONAL FLIGHT INFO * BA 34 0 SU 22DEC
CITY INFO HOUR LOCAL)
JNB ESTIMATED TIME OF DEPARTURE 2245
LEFT THE GATE 2229
AIRCRAFT RETURNED TO RAMP 2230
NEXT INFO WILL BE AT 0100

Doesn't seem like a drama, but then with Twatter, it will be turned into one.

looks like wing clipped building. no casualties.

thats a bit more than slight damage !

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BcH3dl4CEAApQNQ.jpg

A bit worse than I thought, thankfully no casualties on board as far as we know. Friend of mine is on board but haven't spoken to him.

Not full, apparently about 150 seats unsold.

G-BNLL has a thing for wingtips.

Air Accidents Investigation: Airbus A340-311 Boeing 747-436, 4R-ADC G-BNLL

Taxiway centerline on Mike is ~25m from the building. So assuming they were on the centerline, a good 7m of the wing plowed through the building.

G-BNLL has over 109,000 hours on the clock so chances for a write off are big. (depending on damage of course).

http://www.caa.co.za/resource%20cent...DEC%202013.pdf

CAUTION / RESTRICTION
1. ACFT to exercise caution when taxiing on TWY B southbound to THR RWY 03L due to Apron taxilane M extending from TWY B in a Southerly direction.

Bugger.....wrong taxiway?

lucky there was no fire
 

There was a considerable fuel leak. Fire dep was there quickly to hose it down.

Major damage indeed, hull loss would be my guess on such an old airframe. Quite lucky there was no fire.

Passengers were deplaned with stairs and bussed back to the terminal.

They came from the apron, and missed the turn onto B apparently. Found it hard to believe they went onto such a narrow taxiway, with that building being so close.

We departed just after it had happened, and couldn't believe the damage we saw.:rolleyes:

But then again, it was dark and the lighting there isn't very good.
Do BA's 744's have taxilights, or just turn-off lights? I remember some classics having only turn-off lights. In Africa I use the landing lights often when taxiing.

I can see 'Follow the green' being one of the recommendations from the upcoming investigation...

And an incident of this magnitude belongs in Rumours & News indeed.

So no greens on taxilane M, then? If so, pretty embarrassing incident, straying away from the greens at night... Would recommend also some 'MAX SPAN ..." markings on M

I didn't mean it like that Dibo.

JNB doesn't have that system (unless I've missed it completely).
While it could have saved the day here...

BA only have turn-off lights on the -400. However, they use the outboard landing lights during taxi to compensate for the lack of taxi lights.

Worked on the classic which never had a taxi light customer option, so I assume they decided to go without them on the -400. Just like Cathay, Lufthansa etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the wheels on the wing gear ended up in the mud.

Doesn't look like much of a centerline on that taxiway. Does BA have an Airport Moving Map installation?

Got to feel for this crew. Even if they'd missed that outhouse they'd have been in for a tight 3 point turn.
http://i56.servimg.com/u/f56/14/32/14/65/joburg10.jpg

I would think shut down and tow out as more appropriate.

There is a caution on the taxi chart in the AIP:

Taxiways chart AIP

There is however to wingspan warning, and the "taxiway" they ended up on is defined as a apron taxilane.

And then this was just a 747, not even an A380. Maybe we should require that aircraft have proximity sensors in the wing tips...

British Airways Incident at Johannesburg
 

Got to love the press ..... Taker from News 24

BA plane clips building at OR Tambo

A British Airways flight bound for London has veered off the runway, crashing into a building at OR Tambo International.

I've often wondered why those buildings were so close to the movement areas...

Feel sorry for the crew!

Was it Night? If so, did taxiway mike have green centerline Lighting?

Wot? No schools, shopping centres thronged with pre-Christmas crowds, blazing fuel tanks, thousands of panic stricken passengers on board?

If you would have hit the building with a car it would have been called a crash...

British Airways Plane 'Crash' In Johannesburg
 

Just noticed while watching some news
: British Airways Plane 'Crash' In Johannesburg British Airways Plane 'Crash' In Johannesburg

One thing is for sure. Whatever the accident investigation findings are, somebody is going to get a real a**e kicking!! The BBC are now showing passengers stills of the wing. Really surprised the BA skipper attempted that!

Per G-INFO:

Total Hours:106615 at 31/12/2012

Add another 4,000 to that (since we're pretty much at the end of 2013) and the likely short future life with BA and I think insurers will be taking a long hard look at this.

Does BA have a reserve 744 that it can press into service; bad time of the year for this to happen ...

Does BA have a reserve 744 that it can press into service; bad time of the year for this to happen ...


BA shows four 747-400s parked in the desert - I don't know how much it would take to put one of those back into service, but probably a lot less than it would to fix this one :ugh:

110,000 hours on the clock. That must be up there with one of the oldest passenger airframes in Europe? I gather it would've been retired in the not too distant future?


What are BA doing with their retired airframes? Sending it to Victorville or somewhere similar? Or are they sending them to a salvage company?

RLT's photo on post 40 looks uncannily like the A380 incident at the last Paris Air Show.:ooh:

BA are withdrawing 14 jumbos in the next year or so with BNLR due to be the next, maybe it will hang on for a bit longer now, they are being sent to victorville for scrapping along with the 734s

Lufthansa retired the first couple of -400s with 118-120k hours. LH really maintains a gold standard of fleet utilization and dispatch reliability.

IIRC -BNLL had a heavy check just recently and definitely wasn't scheduled for retirement in 2014 and 2015. That may now change of course. Depending on the insurer.

It may cost less to put another frame scheduled for retirement through a D-check or heavy C-check (whatever BA does nowadays on the B744), than to repair this frame.

In any case, this proved once again that Boeing's 747 is a tank. Same goes for the 777 as shown at KSFO.