The fence has been knackered for ages, you'll often see people leaning back into it almost like a hammock to experience the effect of lying down as the plane flys over, would the LG not have ripped the fence and posts out for a couple of hundred metres as it comes past ?? especially at that speed, above normal landing speed by all accounts and with that weight behind it.

Thankfully everyone safe and sound.

245 - 285 km/h.

So up to about 177mph! Thats a pretty big old speed for a hunk of metal to slam into the floor and come away looking like that :D

Cheers mate.
Always wondered, thought it was about 150-200mph

I honestly would say that landing demonstrated nothing with regard to the physical integrity of the plane's structure. These tin cans rip apart with what appears to be great ease on hard impacts. I would say that in that respect, it wasn't a hard landing. Because it stayed together - the landing was more due to luck and pilot control (if he had any) to try and ensure that the landing wasn't anywhere near as hard or severe as it "could have" been.

One can be thankful that planes don't suffer major failures very often. Through careful design, lots of testing and high industry standards. Alot has been learnt from aviation inccidents in the past, and that shows from the reduction of inccidents today.

Not going to comment on the "lost" power statements in the news, as thus far that can mean anything, all that is certain is something went wrong and the plane crashed.....will have wait for the final reports to be certain and the summing up on aircrash investigation ;)

The 777 being a very new plane is not good news for its safety record.

<Cue people saying "will never fly on a Boeing again"...like they say with Airbuses ;) >

Aircraft involved was built in 1999 and first used in Jan 2000.
However the 777 design is 20 years old now.
It has a great safety record and this will only add to that safety record, have to agree with Shark Man though - luck was on their side this time.

Flightman, is the correct that there was a loss of both power (i.e. engine thrust) and electrics? Something serious has gone wrong for that to happen, there just shouldn't be a common mode failure which would take down both engines.

If he's lost all engine power on final approach then he's done well. He can only use his existing airspeed and potential energy to get the thing to the airfield. Too high a landing speed is risky, assuming you can even get it to the field, too low a speed and you stall it into the outskirts of Heathrow. And you don't want to put the gear down to the last moment as the drag will worsen the undershoot. The high angle of attack reported might mean he had to scrub off speed for landing, or he had to flare at the last minute to get over the perimeter fence and bang it in short. The reaction of passengers suggests it was the latter.

It was probably a software glitch.... ops there goes Vista again....

DunxC

P.S. Glad everyone seems to have got out o.k.

That puts into perspective how much design and testing work goes into an (alleged) all-new plane. The 777 has been in commercial service for just over 12 years.

1 crash in 12 years is good. (cue British pride: Not as good as Concorde's though ;) )

British Engines keeping the buggers up there :thumb:

Good to see the Brits doing their usual....

BBC NEWS | England | London | Travellers fear delays and frustration

I can understand it must be frustrating for them, but it isn't something that happens everyday, so they should understand the staff being a bit confused :mad:

Apparently the incident has been filmed by a mop. That will be going round on youtube in the comming days I guess.

Not sure if this tit bit of info is true, or if it is outdated. But I was told by a freind of mine who works on turbines that at one point only Roll-Royce fully guaranteed that any failure in their engines would be completely self contained...i.e no fragments escaped from the casing.

Which is a important thing, as quite a few plane crashes were not caused by the engine failure itself; but from damaged hydraulics and other critical flight components caused by engine fragments escaping during the failure.

Would be cool if it was true though :cool:

Not going to say anymore as I don't know anymore! Couple of points up to 4 miles out speed is 160knots ( I think ) and while Rolls were the first to guarantee no uncontained failures GE/PW etc all make the same claim now. I do know that 27L will be departures only for the forseeable future. The landing lights are buggered and its a big job to replace them.

it says on Wikipedia they have a range on 10,740 km, perhaps this should be shortened by a couple of hundred metres ?

Actually, in a bizarre way, this is good news, I got told this afternoon of a plane crash at Heathrow and feared the worst, could so easily have been chunks of airliner all over the place but as luck would have it we have 136 shaken up passengers, one bent plane, some minor injuries and some pretty lengthy delays.

Ok, its better to never go through that but if you are going to be in Plane crash thats the kind to be in, very little prior knowledge, very little in the way of injury and a great story to tell, enough damage to the plane to make it credible with your mates rather than burst tyre or scratched engine cowl. Plus you don't get a third rate actor to play you in the reconstruction on the National Geographic channel !

Shame about the Plane though, looks pretty well shagged, I wonder if any smart arse is going to paint a plane tyre track on the roof of their car ?

My friend who is a military driver seems to think this photo gives a clue that the aircraft was running on the APU as the APU exhaust is fully open.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/image..._bbc416x30.jpg


Here is a video of a blade off test for the 380:

YouTube - A380 Blade Off Test

APU exhaust is always like that - the inlet door on the opposite side gives a clue that the APU was running or in the process of being started.

Shark Man, part of the engine certification requirements is that no part of the engine can hazard the aircraft in the event of failure. This is why engine manufacturers have to do the 'fan blade off' test, to prove that the fan blade can remain contained within the confines of the engine.

Individual turbine blades can pop-off relatively benignly, and do little damage to the rest of the engine. The bigest risks for the turbine is multiple blade release or failure of the turbine / compressor drive shaft. The former can lead to massive out of balance loads and bearing failure, the latter to turbine overspeed and disc burst. There are various mechanisms in place to prevent these events from happening, since there is very little that will stop a turbine disc or a large number of blades rotating round a big drum at over 10,000 rpm!

Regards this incident, the engines are Rolls Royce Trent 800s, and these have an excellent reliability record. Unclear what happened - it would be very unusual for two engines to independantly run down at the same time. At flight idle, the engines are very quiet and it could be difficult to destinguish between the engines running at idle (with low thrust) or just purely windmilling (flamed-out).

A Rolls Royce investigator is on site, but he's unlikely to come up with much until the pilot has been debriefed and the flight data downloaded.

I guess this is what he meant.

Got in from Paris a couple of hours ago now, after considerable delays.

Luckily, we were flying in from close enough to spend a lot of the delay in the Terminal at CDG.

You could see the wreck while taxiing in.

Flying out for the day again tomorrow so hope not too bad!

Good to see that all are ok and that safety records are very good!

Asif

More I think about this I am going to put my money on pilot error.

Quite happy to put flame proof suit on and we will see but I dont like the idea of 'stories' from the pilot coming out so quickly blaming the plane, I suspect he is covering his tracks. If those quotes were from him.

Flame suit off

chop :D

The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder will be in perfect condition, it won't take long to exonerate or implicate the flight crew. My vote is on the former.

Chopper, I was thinking the same thing, again flame suit on, planes don't generally just decide to stop, not both engines a few feet from the end of the runway, however its the point of the journey with the most Pilot involvement.

Either that or Wind Shear, the weather has been a bit random of late.

By the way, I am qualified to give these observations, I used to work in aviation, 2 years in Air Freight and a few weeks on the bar in Terminal one at Manchester airport ;)

No chance mate, a BA 777 Captain just doesn't land 1km short of the runway in normal weather conditions.

Besides, coming in to LHR the plane would be screaming blue murder at the crew if they were flying that far below the ILS glide slope for fun!

Not always Jacko, depending on the varient of 777 it could have been on full autoland, the pilot just sits back and enjoys the ride! :eek:

Wouldn't the APU be run up as part of the early landing sequence/checks?

Yeah, forgot about that, its been around since the Trident. Perhaps his TomTom went wonky ?

Its caused another crash PPRUNE is down !

Any chance anyone could jam it's systems and shut them down albeit for a 100m stretch ?? some looney terrorist with some very high tech equipment.

I know very far fetched but not mentioned yet

When I get into the office on Monday, I'll tell you whether he was above, on or below the glideslope. :norty:

During daytime, planes intercept the glideslope 7.5nm's from touchdown, at 2500ft, so if he was low, he was low for a bloody long time! It didn't happen. This was weather, or a systems failure. The FDR will reveal all. :thumb:

Of course, but it has still happened previously. The difference is RR seem to be more public about it that the US bunch, or is it because we're on teh correct side of the pond.

Noteably a few A330s which your probably very well aware of ;)

Which is why I questioned the story's validity...is it "really" guaranteed? And is that why the other manufacturers are more coy on such brash statements (in the sue city capital of the world ;) ).

Clearly the work of Cnl Stewart and his crew.. but dont worry John McLain is on the case...