BA762 report released (cowl doors openning)
 

Tired technicians' plane mixup led to inflight engine fire, inquiry finds | UK news | The Guardian

Can't find a link to the report itself, doesn't appear to be on the AAIB website as yet. Anyway this doesn't make good reading for BA, maintenance, flight, or cabin crew. A tad worrying after the Transasia incident that the pilot didn't follow procedure on engine shutdown...

Looks like a leak or breach of publication embargo.

C Y A Exercise Complete??
 

I suspected the original holes in the cheese were lurking VERY high up in management, hence the delay in the final release.

There will be a ground engineer with standard qualifications viz overworked, understaffed and commercialy pressured, a similar flight crew and weal marks on their backs from the lashing.

However, the bean counters will sleep easy knowing their names, job titles and positions will never be held up the same scrutiny as the coalface workers.

I still maintain the lessons from this accident have been hidden from the Professional Aviation community, until soon if this news report is to be believed, to the detriment of Flight Safety and thereby denying other organisations from learning and initiating their own preventative measures.:ugh:

Stable door and horse. This was a real wake up call.:=

"I can categorically state that all BA Engineers have been fully briefed on exactly what happened, the reasons why it happened and the measures put in place to prevent it happening it again."

So that's all right then, all SLF and other airlines can sleep easy in their beds because the subject airline's engineers have been (so far exclusively) told what happened and how to prevent it??

I must contact AAIB and tell them there's no need to PUBLISH the full report, as required by legislation, thereby saving lotsa money and effort, as well as sparing the blushes of the subject airline's senior management.

So that's it folks, move along, nothing to see here...........:rolleyes:

AAIB been merged with the NTSB?

:rolleyes:

Send an email to :[email protected] and tell them how poor the aaib website is now it has been migrated to gov.uk. Try searching for an accident report and you will find that most have been deleted.

Contact the Cabinet Office too. The migration to .gov is their doing based on advice from their web 'guru' Martha Lane Fox of Last Minute.Com fame. Obviously she knows far more about technical websites than the punters who actually use the damn thing.

We can take some small comfort from the fact that there are a few dozen archived snapshots of the old AAIB site from Feb 2001 to Feb 2015 here: Internet Memory | UK Government Web Archive

From the report;

No comment!

Long line of accidents and incidents - purely luck has averted major loss of life over more than a decade.....IMHO need to get rid of the old boys club from both the airline and authority - but that will never happen.
What happened to professionalism?

Report here
 

Still looking through the report, but I am surprised to read this... how can it be possible?

Because as I understand it ;) the company involved has an SOP that if "full time" auto thrust/autothrottle is available it must be used....the rule applies to almost all types, not just Airbus. That said you can despatch with autothrottle/auto thrust inop as per the DDG and the FCOM, you're obviously (?) trained and checked on in the sim on flying with manual thrust, but you can't opt to fly manual thrust on the line simply because you want to....

IMHO and that of many others for somewhat obvious reasons it's a somewhat a flawed SOP !!!!!! and has been the subject of much heated debate elsewhere, but ultimately management and the lawyers write the Ops manual. I wonder if it will now be amended.....

And if you must know I haven't operated my type on the line using manual thrust for well over five years...........

Amazed to read these BA pilots had never flown the aircraft using manual thrust!. Presumably the large heading changes mentioned in the report due to the yaw caused by manual thrust mismanagement.
I flew the BA 744 for a number of years and the SOP was, when manual handling, the auto throttle had to be disconnected when ever the autopilot not used. ie manual handling manual thrust control
Kept us in good handling practice in suitable conditions, why the difference on other types 777 etc.?
During my time with GSS on the B744F the SOP was even better, in that we did not use the Monitored Approach and were able to hand fly the aircraft at any time in suitable conditions. Its called Airmanship, and seems sadly lacking in these automated times.

In BA a retrograde step, in view of the ever increasing accidents happening due to poor manual handling.
I'm surprised British Airways subscribe to this procedure.

A "comedy" of errors?

cessnapete

I'd agree, it's bizarre isn't it?

With the caveat that I'm not a trainer, but I went 744 - 777 a few years back I'll offer the following (IMHO very weak) explanation that I've heard:

AFAIK the 744 SOP remains as you remember it, the argument for manual flight=manual thrust being that if you do hand fly the 744 with autothrottle in the pitch/power couple could be destablising, ( theory being if you handfly with manual thrust you are knowingly making the thrust inputs and therefore supposedly are able to anticipate any pitch changes).

OTOH with the 777 operating in normal FBW mode the pitch power couple is automatically removed...so, in theory at least in normal circumstances regardless of thrust changes the aircraft shouldn't respond in pitch, therefore..... autothrottle isn't destablising when handflying...., therefore it can be used without detriment to manual flying...which BA management decided to convert to an SOP of autothrust must be used for manual flying...(because in their eyes it offers another level of protection to the flight envelope). I have to add that the 777 (in the sim at least) is a beaut to fly fully manually, however on the line at BA it's mandatory that the autothrottle is used if available.


I suspect given the above if BA mainline ever had the 744F and the pitch/power couple has been engineered out (has it?) the SOP would have been autothrottle on at all times.

I can promise you that BA line pilots have been making this point for years, sadly we don't write the BA OM.....

Thought you bus-drivers could not fly man/thrust (?). Aren't those armchair pilot 'Thrust Selectors' dummy Thrust Levers ? Couple of detents on the quadrant to be hit at the same time in order to satisfy the computers and "she does it for you"..................? Now, thrust levers like in my old Boeing had to be paddled, re-checked and targeted very carefully or you could blow things like EPR, EGT etc etc..................Gosh, these clever Frenchies ; They actually have convinced you lot that YOU are FLYING the aircraft !........................Ok, crash helmet on, heading for the bunker..............incoming !

Flew with a red-nosed carrier not long ago, on a cockpit fam flight. Beautiful visual approach into a fairly long and unobstructed runway, flown manually with manual thrust from around 9000ft. Aircraft was a strange mix of modern forward panel and jurassic overhead, jumpseat quite horrible but doable for a 45 min flight.

The take-off was manual flight and auto-throttle to around 15000ft.

Would rather, as in any day of the week and twice on Sundays, fly with a crew who are free to exercise judgement, and use automatics as and when it's the best option. Flying a short sector on a clear skies day, off a fairly quiet airport and into one that's even quieter, encountering almost no other traffic either enroute or in the terminal areas, is obviously a perfect opportunity to take the bull by the horns and do a spot of driving yourself. Any operation which has SOPs written specifically to prevent that, is run by a bunch of idiots. Probably the un-holy and culture destroying trinity of Lawyers, Accountants and Consultants.