It was NOT a fire or overheat of any description.
It was NOT an undercarriage fault of any description.
It WAS a fuel leak from the CWT.
The aircraft is serviceable and due to fly today!

I witnessed the above event whilst driving around the perry track on my way home. I called the tower to advise what i had seen.

It was difficult to ascertain whether it was vapour or smoke but it seemed to be coming from the centreline of the aircraft and not an engine.
The gear was raised at the normal time and the aircraft seem to continue with a MID or SAM SID (which led me to believe it had not been noticed).

LHR tower advised me that they were aware of the situation.

All initial actions were indicative of the crew not being aware of the situation.

The gear page is not displayed for T/O, a taxi from T4 to 27L is very short and I would not expect the brakes to get very hot in that short a distance. The Eicas caution comes up around 5 units (I think) which is equivalent to an RTO at 120 knots at max weight, so probably unlikely to come up during a T/O.

shafted@work ...Generally in BA we brief that we will fly the SID while we deal with any emergency...that way it reduces the number of balls in the air at any one time.... Makes sense to me.

maxy101

Quite agree, just be sure the performance calculations are based on the sid and not in accordance with perf A. We now have SOP of straight ahead to 1500 agl as that is what is guaranteed through our perf calculations (assuming a perf related failure of course- which it would seem this was not).

cheers

Would the cabin crew have been given a back to back payment
plus an unpopular destination payment(who wants to go to
LHR as a destination).

Just to put this to bed - I have just flown the aircraft in question ('MME) and all the details of the fault and rectification were in the tech log. It is now fully servicable and from what I have read the incident appears to have been handled well.

If we want to use up a bit more bandwidth picking over the bones then fine -but with luck this "Airdisaster that never was" can slowly fade................

ETOPS - thanks for the update and tidying up the loose ends.

But what about the poor Cabin Crew involved, I hope they did get counselling upon arrival and were not expected to operate for at least 28 days!:hmm:

surely any distress caused to Cabin Crew during Emergency procedures, is fully analyzed and understood, and procedures in place that command the support of everyone involved?

"And two weeks off and counselling for the darlings down the back"


"But what about the poor Cabin Crew involved, I hope they did get counselling upon arrival and were not expected to operate for at least 28 days!"

these remarks seem a little harsh?

Depends whether an RTO ~80K for 1 cockpit indication, and return to stand, or an uneventful Go-Around, count as "Emergency Procedures".

To a few of our Senior CC, and their Management, they seem to. After the above events the CC have stated they were "distressed" and needed time to recover, and all sent home for a few days.

I must stress, only a few, and invariably led by one or 2 "ringleaders", and backed up 100% by a weak and over PC management. The FC of course are only asked "will you run out of discretion by the time we re-crew the sector?". Oh and of course the passengers, who have a genuine cause to feel a little stressed are the losers...

NoD

thanks for that NoD ...... there's obviously some "background" that I wasn't familiar with

cheers .....

dungfunnel,

You will have to explain that post!

Hope you offered to buy her a drink first???
Fingers crossed it's not a hard landing:eek: (Won't even mention the wind component - Oops, I just did)

PHX

It won't be fading away to the BAMC boys n girls who missed an inspection after maintenance will it?

This could have been very, very dramatic if the brakes had been hot!
The poster who said he saw the brakes glowing red hot is mistaken.

There for the grace of...............:hmm:

Some very poor taste comments from "professional's"!!

And you'll all never have made a mistake?

I'm not sticking up for anyone here, I am fortunate to know more fact than fiction, and this is a very serious incident that as far as I know is still under investigation.

We should all be reminded by this that vigilance throughout any airline op's, crew, eng etc must be maintained to stop things like this happening in the first place....Yes?

Keep to the facts, and cut out the "disaster" B.S, try and learn from these incidents instead, then hopefully they'll never happen and if they do, everyone takes note and it doesn't happen again.

Eng :ok:

Dude~

Plane was met on taxiway by emergency services with slightly smoking brakes despite using reverse thrust and after a few minutes taxied slowly back to T4.

Good performance of the crew and all supporting systems.

This incident just shows that not everything is covered by EICAS annunciated checklist do exist.

If Iemember correctly, a B777 landed last year in Danang with a fuel leak.

Crew suspected brake and possibly some other problems and decelerated basically on reverse only, good show.

certainly not fading here at BAMC I can tell you...

BA 777 incident at LHR?
 

BA 777 incident at LHR?

Just reported on BBC news that a triple seven departing LHR was seen to have 'smoke' trailing it on departure -associated with a strong smell of Jet A1. Pilots decided a fuel leak was occurring and returned to LHR after dumping 900,000 kgs (?!) (now corrected to 90,000kgs) of fuel. Fuel panel hatch (their description) found loose with securing screws found in attached plastic bag.

When was this?

(edited to acknowledge correction in reporting)

I would say 900 tonnes of fuel was a sign of someone not doing their homework properly. :hmm:

Happened in June, BBC was referring to AAIB report from a couple of days ago

AAIB Special bulletin