Emergency plane landing probe blames organisational problems
AIRCRAFT technicians for a flight which was forced to conduct an emergency landing at Heathrow might have been fatigued, while cabin crew failed to act on concerns from alarmed passengers about the state of the plane, an investigation has shown.
The British Airways Airbus A319 returned to the west London airport with smoke billowing from one of its engines, minutes into its flight to Oslo, Norway, on May 24 2013.
The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) report said doors on both engines had been left unlatched during maintenance and made a raft of suggestions designed to prevent such an incident happening again.
The unlatching of the fan cowl doors had not been identified before the plane took off with 75 passengers and five crew on board.
The captain chose to make the emergency landing four minutes after take-off, with the aircraft suffering a punctured fuel pipe and a fire in the right engine.
Passengers and crew evacuated via the escape slides without injury.
A report highlighted a series of safety recommendations, including tackling crew fatigue and in-flight damage assessments.
The report heard two technicians observing the plane failed to notice the Airbus was the “wrong” aircraft.
The report said: “Analysis of their working time records showed that there was an increased risk that their per formance could be compromised by fatigue.
“This was induced by the significant level of planned and overtime working that they had carried out.
“There was a two-in-five chance that (the technicians) experienced high levels of sleepiness.”
The investigation found a maintenance error led to the fan cowl doors on both engines being left unlatched following scheduled overnight work. The issue was not identified before the aircraft’s departure the next morning.
A number of organisational factors contributed to the maintenance error. The operator has since taken action to address these issues, the report said.
The AAIB said “several pa ssenger s” said t he y attempted to inform a member of cabin crew about the leaking fluid from the right engine.
The report said: “Despite these cues, information regarding the fuel leak was not assimilated by the cabin crew and not passed to the flight crew as required.”
BA said “appropriate initial action” had been taken.