How this Aircraft lost BOTH engines and landed!

This video has been made possible along with brilliance the fun way to learn science technology engineering and maths it is 17th january 2008 and a boeing triple 7 200 of british airways is in the final with 2-7 remaining in london heathrow uk The pilots They are preparing for what they believe will be a standard landing after a 10+ hour flight from Beijing, China, but suddenly the

engines

stop responding to external trusted commands, instead they begin to back into the idol. of flight, the plane rises. try to follow the glide slope signal, but without the help of the

engines

it is impossible to do so.

The pilots are now faced with a scenario they have never seen before or been trained for and do everything they can to try to follow the signal. Let's rectify the situation, but the plane ends up crashing into the ground 330 meters before the threshold of runway 2-7. Now let's take a look at the final report together and try to find out why

this

happened and also how well the pilots handled it. This situation, be attentive, British Airways flight 38 was a scheduled flight from Beijing in China to London Heathrow in the United Kingdom, it was flown by a Boeing triple seven two three six with two uh voice royce engines, they are rb211 trent 895 17 engines, the plane was built in 2001, making it about seven years old at the time of the incident and no problems were reported for

this

flight.

The flight crew consisted of three pilots. It was Captain Peter Burkhill, who was 43 years old at the time of the incident. he had about 12,700 hours and 8,430 in type along with him was first officer John Coward who was about 41 years old and had 9,000 hours in total and 7,000 hours in type and he was also our third pilot called conor mcgenis, he has 35 years. old man has 5,000 hours in total and 1,120 hours in type and was there as a cruise pilot, someone who comes in and relieves the other pilot so that he can go to rest during the flight, so it is very normal that we are three pilots or even more, If you do very long whole legs in the cabin, there are 13 cabin crew serving the 136 passengers, which is very few for a Boeing triple 7, which makes this plane very light and that will actually have some impact later on the previous flight.

It was operated from London Heathrow to Beijing and when the plane

landed

the fuel in the tanks was recorded at approximately -20 degrees Celsius and after refueling for the return leg to Heathrow the fuel temperature was still -2 degrees now in The pre-flight stage The pilots have been reviewing their flight plans and realized that they were going to fly through very cold air masses on their way specifically over Russia and Scandinavia, so normally the air temperature in those latitudes tend to be -50 to -60 degrees Celsius. but on this date temperatures were recorded to be as low as -70 which was unusually low but not extremely low, but because of that the british airways flight planning department had planned for flight 38 to do a staggered descent on the road to reach warmer temperatures you might now wonder why this is a problem.

Do you know what it matters if it's cold outside where the plane flies? And that's a fair question because the plane itself makes the components of the plane, the engines, the body and so on can withstand very, very cold temperatures, but the limitation comes with the fuel, because even so a fuel has a freezing temperature of about -44 degrees Celsius and yet a fuel that can also be used has an even higher freezing temperature of -37 degrees Celsius. degrees, if the fuel is allowed to drop to those temperatures, it will turn into a wax-like substance. That wax-like substance has a much lower fluidity rate than fuel and can start to clog things like fuel filters and pumps, and because Additionally, the Boeing Triple Seven actually has a fuel temperature warning system, so So if the fuel temperature gets within three degrees of the fuel well freezing temperature, the crew will get a low fuel temperature warning and will have to do something about it most of the time. the time they just need to descend to get out of this now those of you who have been paying attention until now will have noticed that I said it was going to be around -70 degrees Celsius on the route but the freezing temperature of the fuel is only -44, So how does that work?

This is where you have to start to understand a little bit about the physics of light and the temperatures that we're dealing with, so when we fly we're basically dealing with two different temperatures. Well, we have the static. sat air temperature, which is basically the temperature you get if you were standing in a room holding a drop thermometer, okay, just the current temperature, if instead you held that thermometer in the air and then started running at mach 0.02 or faster. I would notice that the temperature actually starts to increase. Well, this has to do with something called ram rise.

Well, there is a bit of compressibility in the air. As the air is compressed at higher speeds it actually increases the temperature a little bit and this leads to another temperature which is called the total air temperature tat and the total air temperature when we are at our cruising speed of mach 0.08, For example, it will actually be significantly higher now, this should not be confused with the temperature rise you get due to air friction because the temperature rise from air friction will occur at a much higher rate, so If you fly at the speeds of the concorde or the sr-71 blackbird, then that will be what will increase the temperature the most, but up to the normal level. normal

aircraft

cruising speeds, the ram rise is what is causing this and this means that if we are at a temperature of perhaps minus 70 degrees static air temperature, the total air temperature, which is what is actually affecting the fuel in the tanks, it will be closer. to maybe -35 -40. and on top of that the fuel temperature will never be as cold as the outside temperature because even though the fuel is stored in the wings and this really very cold air flows over the wings creating a heat transfer from the fuel coming out into the air cold inside the fuel tanks.

We have several components that actually heat the fuel, so on the Triple 7, for example, there are hydraulic heat exchangers, two on the right wing and one on the left wing that heats the fuel. continually and because of that, the fuel dipstick, the actual temperature gauge is located on the left side tank because in theory that's where the fuel temperature will be lowest, guys, if you're interested in things like thermodynamics, or physical and mathematical technology, then you should definitely check out the sponsor of this episode, which is brilliant, great, it's a fantastic learning tool that makes learning interactive and fun.

There are many different courses, but scientific thinking is a course that I really recommend if you want. I'm interested in these things. I have been working on these courses together with my 11-year-old son Lucas. He loves little brain puzzles and everything in there, and if you come across something you don't understand, they will have great ways to explain how to think about it and to advance his learning. If you think this sounds like something you want to try, use the link here in the description below or here above and it will give you a huge 20 off the annual rate of brilliant, I really recommend you just click the link, check it out if it's something for you and if it is, get it so the next thing we need to discuss when we talk about temperatures in the fuel is the water in the fuel.

Basically, it is impossible to completely keep water out of the fuel. We do the best we can. We make sure there is not much water in the fuel that is lifted from the fuel trucks. We also do daily inspections of

aircraft

fuel tanks to make sure. that there's not a lot of fuel in there, but you know that air is going to come into the tanks through these vent springs, it's going to contain moisture as the temperature drops, it's going to start forming water droplets that are eventually going to end up inside the fuel, so a little bit Water in fuel is absolutely normal, and water can exist in fuel in three different states, or it is dissolved water.

Salt water is when water molecules basically bond with hydrocarbon molecules in the fuel and in this case it doesn't really matter. true it just exists there however as the temperature goes down in the fuel you will start to get something called suspended water and this is basically little droplets of water that are suspended within the fuel that travel freely in the fuel and will eventually start to meet. each other hitting larger water droplets and since water has a higher density than fuel they will fall to the bottom of the tanks and form small puddles and usually at the lowest points of the tanks that is where we have our Fuel Drain to find these little puddles of water and get them out of the fuel.

The problem can occur when there is some suspended water moving in the tanks and the fuel temperature drops between minus five and the minimum temperature. because what happens then is that the suspended water will turn into ice crystals, these ice crystals will move and in that temperature range between -5 and -20, these ice crystals tend to start sticking together. and they can stick to things like fuel lines for example, or fuel tanks, this is what scientists call the sticky range, as the temperature drops even lower than that, then they get so cold that they don't really stick to anything They simply get sucked into the fuel into the engines and burn, but ice crystals in the sticky range can be a problem because they tend to stick together and create larger volumes of this icy, slushy substance and this is going to become important later, let's also talk a little bit about the fuel system on the Boeing triple 7.

So when the fuel is taken from the tanks, it goes through the pipes well and first it goes through a low pressure pump and then it goes into something. Called a fuel oil heat exchanger, the fuel oil heat exchanger has two purposes: one, it cools the engine oil properly and two, it heats the fuel before it enters the downstream components and enters the engine for its combustion chambers. way the fuel. An oil heat exchanger is manufactured. This is basically a group of over a thousand very thin tubes. Now the fuel is pushed through these tubes and the oil is directed around these tubes, so you have a good heat exchange.

Well, the fuel oil heat exchanger will become important. for this incident, but that's enough technical information for now, the crew did a completely normal pre-flight, started backing up, taxied and then took off on their flight to Heathrow, they had reported in detail about the temperature as an issue they were very aware of. and they basically said that throughout the flight they were going to monitor the fuel temperature and if the fuel temperature started to get too low then they would descend, they began their climb to their initial cruise altitude of 35,000 feet and the initial climb. It was flown in an autopilot mode called V Nav Now when you are in V Nav basically the aircraft will confidence into a full climb and the aircraft will attempt to climb as quickly and efficiently as possible.

They continued at 35,000 feet until they were about 350 nautical miles north of Moscow at which point they were making a stepped climb to 38,000 feet. Now for this depth climb they did not use v-navin. Well, they used another autopilot mode called vertical speed. Now vertical speed is an autopilot mode that Basically, we will prioritize the vertical speed of the aircraft, so when the pilots reach, for example, four five hundred six hundred feet per minute, then the aircraft will try to reach that climb speed and simply It will add as much confidence as you need to achieve this. and the reason this is the preferred mode of climb during cruising is because don't you know it doesn't

both

er the passengers, they will hardly notice as the engines slowly increase their thrust and then there is a pleasant calm.

Gentle climb to the new cruising altitude for crowds and they made two of these cruise climbs, one, as I said, slightly north of Moscow and then another on the flight at over 400 when they passed over Sweden, the temperature in the tanks never went down from less. 34 degrees and that is well above the freezing levels of the fuel, so the crew were happy that the plane was proceeding normally on route and they began their descent towards London Heathrow. While the plane nowdescends towards Heathrow, the temperature outside is starting to warm up. the fuel temperature rises from -35 degrees below zero to -22 degrees during descent, the aircraft flies in a holding pattern over lamborn on flight level one, a series at 11,000 feet, which is completely normal at heathrow There is always a lot of traffic. coming in there, so you can always wait a few turns in the hold before you start approaching during the cruise and the sand here the captain is flying but they have planned for the senior first officer to do the landing and they are going to do something called a monitored approach, which is where one of the pilots does the approach which is done with instruments and the other pilot who got one that is actually going to land starts looking for visual cues at an earlier stage and as soon as that pilot is happy to take control basically will take the controls and complete the landing.

The reason he wants to do this is because it does not force a pilot to switch from instrument flying to visual flying and eliminates all the risks associated with this. so this was standard operating procedure for british airways at the time, triple seven is now vectored for a tab approaching runway two, seven left at heathrow, everything looks completely normal, combine with the tab approach , just robbing the pilot at this point and everything seems completely normal. up to about a thousand feet above the ground at this point the plane shoots through the clouds they become visual and transfer the controls to the first officer and also when they go through the clouds there are some wind changes and when the wind changes you will also have changes of speed and the external pilot and the external throttle are activated, which means that the external trust is starting to try to counteract these changes in speed and it does so by increasing thrust and decreasing it cyclically about four times, okay? on the fourth confidence boost, the plane is about 720 feet above the ground, the first officer is looking out preparing to disengage, but now something strange happens first, the right engine starts suddenly, going down to the right, the sticks of the truss remain in the same position, but the confidence just smoothly returns to just above idle confidence does not fail but it is a title confidence seven seconds later the same thing happens to the left engine the first officer begins to notice this because they are starting to see a split in the confidence level position, but you don't really understand what you're seeing, you're kind of mumbling a little about it as the plane passes 500 feet, now the plane is fully prepared to land at this point with flaps 30 and basically everyone. of the checklists completed, so the captain says stabilized and the first officer answers with just and the reason he answers is because he sees that the speed is now starting to deteriorate, there are still no warnings about engine failure, the engines are still running.

We are building trust, but in a very, very low amount. Now they had planned to disengage autopilot at this point, but it is likely that the first officer knows that he is concerned about what he is seeing, so he has not disengaged which one. It means that the autopilot is now trying to maintain the glide slope, the electronic glide slope keeps it on the correct trajectory towards the runway, but as the speed is now deteriorating and getting lower and lower, the aircraft needs to increase its attitude nose continuously to maintain the same amount of lift to keep the glide slope descending at this point there are recordings of the flight crew starting to discuss why the engines are idling and trying to troubleshoot, but this is only about 30 seconds before impact, so we have very little time.

At this point, at 115 knots, the first low speed master caution warning appears, the captain responds in a slightly unusual way, so when he recognizes this low speed event, he steps aside and moves the throttle stick. flaps from the flat landing position of turn 30 to flaps. 25 also raises his hand and turns on the engine start switches and turns on the apu now the attitude of the plane is very high and the stall speed for flaps 30 is about 104 knots with this weight for flaps 25 is 106 knots and almost here They receive the first warning of stick shaking just as the six shaker is turned on, the first officer reacts immediately by lowering the nose attitude and when he does so, he disengages the autopilot, the captain realizes what is happening about to happen now and call emergencies at The radio plane is descending rapidly toward the ground.

Here the first officer attempts to stop the rate of descent by pulling back on the yoke, but the rate is too low and it is too late. The plane crashes into the ground at about 1,400 feet per minute, producing approximately 2.9. g and as it does so the main gear impacts first, bounces a little and then the right main gear collapses, separates from the plane and as it separates it goes up and makes a hole in the right side of the plane as it flies, it branches approximately through row 30, where a passenger is sitting and breaks his leg.

The left main gear also collapses, but remains attached to the plane and actually opens the fuel tank on the left side a little. side that breaks the fuel tank, the nose gear collapses and the plane skids to the right and ends up basically slightly to the right of the runway 27 left threshold markings, but the plane is intact, the crew is immediately stunned, but after a few seconds start an orderly evacuation with the captain's order. All evacuation exits work. Some of them can see some debris outside, so they redirect passengers to other exits, but overall, this is a very successful evacuation.

Well, everyone survives. There is a serious situation. injured and those are the passengers who were sitting next to the hole in the cabin of the right main train, but everyone else only has some minor injuries and this is a complete miracle, the evacuation itself was very smooth, however, there were reports from some passengers who brought their personal belongings with them and even one passenger who after the evacuation was completed decided to go up one of the evacuation slides to retrieve the personal belongings and this of course is a complete no-no, yes If you ever end up in an evacuation, just make sure you and your loved ones move in an orderly manner to the nearest exit, leave everything behind, you'll get it later, and then just get out and follow the instructions of the crew or fire marshal who could be in the way.

A really thorough investigation is now being launched and it is the Air Accident Investigation Board in the UK along with the NTSB in the US and many other players who are starting to try to find out how something like this could have happened. How did the engines react? This way and what they came up with after many months of testing, including setting up a simulated engine, introducing water and checking all the different components involved, was that the most likely cause of this was that these crystals Free-flowing ice sheets had begun to accumulate. inside the pipe for the engine and because the flight was done but very low for the triple seven, the fuel flows throughout the flight until the end, it was actually only when the engine began to ask for confidence with the fins 30 hanging .

The fuel flow increased well and when it increased, it sucked up all of these ice crystals that had gotten trapped inside the pipe and ended up inside the fuel oil heat exchanger. Remember that this is the part that is located just before the engines. To heat the fuel and cool the oil it was now expected that this ice would have basically formed in a sludge which had temporarily stopped the transfer of fuel through the fuel oil heat exchanger and that is probably what has caused this and they have actually , I found another incident where a US registered triple 7 had a very similar incident on a 390 flight also after cold fuel temperatures, where they attempted to climb a step and when they did so right after climbing a step, the right engine started. coming back in a very similar way took a few minutes and then came back again when the ice probably melted inside the fuel oil heat exchanger, so the investigation came up with several different safety recommendations, one of the safety recommendations actually ensured that Royce Royce had to redesign this part of the fuel system, the fuel oil heat exchanger, so that all triple sevens that use the rb211 trent 800 engines now have a fuel oil heat exchanger that can actually handle this amount of slush, although This is how it was shown.

Through extensive data collection for over 775,000 flights, these two flights that suffered this were the only ones that had this combination of circumstances, so how did the crew respond to this incident? Well, the final report goes into some detail when it comes to this and if we start looking at the flight crew as a team, the background report basically says that they think they worked effectively and professionally given the circumstances they take into account. Considering the fact that none of them had been trained to double the engine back at such a low altitude, they say that the actions taken by the crew were effective and had a positive effect on the outcome of the incident and if we look at the crew for Separately, the captain's decision to move the flaps from 30 to 25 was a bit unorthodox, however, it extended the plane's glide and the final report basically said that, although it had very little effect, the plane would have

landed

within the limits from the airport even if he hadn't, extended the plan. with approximately 50 meters and that could have had a significant impact because about 40 meters before the landing point there was an ILS antenna and if the plane had hit that antenna as part of the landing it could have caused even more damage to the aircraft.

So that was seen as a positive thing and probably would have had an even more positive influence on the glide distance if it had happened at an earlier stage further out, but this brings us to the first officer's actions now that the first officer was The pilot who was flying during this event and was responding in the way that could be expected when faced with a very rapidly developing situation like this, the really important thing here is that once he confronted the agitator, even though he was very close On the ground, he did what his training had taught him, which is to push the nose down to make sure he unloaded the wings and kept the plane flying.

That may seem obvious, but when you're 400 feet off the ground and you see the runway approaching. above, I can tell you that the feeling of wanting to keep the nose up to stretch the glide and land on the runway is going to be almost overwhelming and the fact that he simply focused on what he was trained to do. lowered the nose and pitched it toward the ground, allowing the plane to continue flying. If it had not, if we had attempted to stretch it, the plane would likely have stalled and basically landed in an uncontrolled manner, possibly even out of bounds. the limits of the airport, very well done, great, see how the training kicks in even during an extreme situation like this, once the plane stopped on the ground, the captain initially initiated the evacuation command over the vhf frequency, so who called the tower instead of calling the pa.

Then he very quickly realized that and made a secondary pa to start the evacuation, that's why the evacuation took a few seconds to start, but it had no impact on safety. Following the outcome of this incident, the cabin crew did a fantastic job even though they had not been informed of this, obviously the pilots did not even know until about 35-40 seconds before landing. Once it happened, they reacted accordingly. to training and facilitated a really effective evacuation of the aircraft, so overall it was a great job under the circumstances by the guys on the operational team.

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