This post is the second in a series discussing decision making by airline pilots. The first discussed the case of a plane making an emergency landing because of hygenical paper powder in the toilets. This one is about a British Airways Boeing 747 which flew from Los Angeles to London with one engine inoperative.

The engine number 2 (inner engine on left wing) failed immediately after take-off. The crew decided to shut the failed engine down. The next question to them what “What to do ?”. They elected to fly to London, and had finally to divert to Manchester because they were slightly short of fuel.

It is easy to say it was a fool thing to cross the Atlantic Ocean with a failed engine, and be finally forced to divert. But let’s have a closer look at the options…

First possibility, which seems obvious, was to land back in Los Angeles. Sounds safe and easy. The consequences would be to drop fuel over California to reach the maximal landing weight, and pay 200′000 dollars in indemities to passengers, according to new european regulations.

Second option was to fly to an intermediate airport, let’s say Chicago or JFK, where British Airways has major maintenance teams, and manage a connection for the passengers. Expensive as well.

With latest technical and planning information available the crew decided to continue to London, for a 11 hours flight with three engines only. By crew, I mean here the cockpit crew, but also the technical staff in London, as well as planning and weather services from British Airways.

With the new parameters the plane will consume more fuel, but calculations shown that the fuel on board was still sufficient for the trip. So after circling in the Los Angeles area for 20 minutes, the crew resumed its flight towards London.

The second problem they had to face was stronger than expected winds aloft. As a consequence they realised that the remaining fuel would not be sufficient to reach London and they had to divert to Manchester to repsect regulations about reserve fuel.

To summarize, the options were:

1) Divert to LAX, delay passengers and create costs to the company. Any other diversion en-route would lead to the same results.
2) Fly to London on three engines, which is possible according to Boeing and BA engineering.

This incident became famous because the plane had to divert to Manchester. If the winds aloft had been as forecasted and the plane landed in London, anyone would certainly agree with the crew decision, and compliment them.

Wind forecasting is by far not an exact science, and the calculations probably gave results slightly within the legal reserves. The decision to continue has probably been made to avoid any inconvenience for passengers, as the crew declared.

From my point of view, this decision was a good one. We will never know how much the indemnity did influence the decision. The passengers were never in danger, and the crossing over north America gave time to evaluate how the plane was performing. Doing the same thing from London to Los Angeles would be different…

To make your own opinion, here are three links from various sources. Let me know if you conclusions are not the same…

Report from UK Incident Investigation Board

Report from Air Traffic Controllers association

Further development from the same source