Fuel mistake caused engine fire and Gatwick emergency landing

AN AIRLINER made an emergency landing when its engine caught fire after an engineer incorrectly refuelled it, a report found.

The maintenance worker, who didn’t speak English as a first language, added 38 times too much anti-bacterial chemical to the Airbus A321-211 fuel in February 2020, investigators found.

Three days later, one engine caught fire and the other stalled near Gatwick airport. A crash was averted because the 236-seat plane was light with no passengers and just seven crew in quiet airspace in clear conditions.

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) report said that while the aircraft was being serviced at a depot in Cyprus an engineer did not understand that ‘ppm’ meant ‘parts per million’.

The engineer, 52, searched the internet for the ‘ppm’ definition and then used an online calculator to work out the correct amount. He poured 30kg of Kathon into each wing tank instead of 0.8kg. He also poured the biocide directly into the tanks, so that it pooled in the bottom, rather than mixing it up.

The plane took off from Larnaca, Cyprus to Stansted and problems with the engines were noted over the next few flights. But it wasn’t until its fourth flight when the plane took off from Gatwick, that the pilot noticed number one engine “banging and surging” at 500ft. He said the Titan Airways jet was “yawning... and fishtailing” as his crew told him that flames were billowing out of the tailpipe in the darkness.

The 28-year-old pilot sent out a Mayday 47 seconds after taking off and took manual control, making an emergency landing back at Gatwick at 12.20am on February 26, 11 minutes after taking off.

The report concluded that the excess Kathon contaminated the fuel and caused the partial failure of the engines.

AAIB called for the European Union Aviation Safety Agency to classify biocide additives as a “critical maintenance task” subject to tighter rules and procedures.