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00:00Seconds after takeoff from Los Angeles, a fire erupts in the engine of a British Airways Boeing

00:05747 carrying over 350 passengers. But incredibly, the pilots don't return to the airport.

00:14Instead, they decide to continue their journey to London, a decision which would soon lead to

00:19more problems. This is the controversial story of British Airways Flight 268 on the night of

00:26February 20, 2005, 352 passengers and 18 crew boarded a British Airways Boeing 747 at Los Angeles

00:36International Airport in the United States. They were bound for London's Hiau Airport, a journey that

00:42would take about 11 hours. Given the length of the flight, there were three pilots on board,

00:48a captain sitting in the left-hand seat, a first officer sitting in the right-hand seat,

00:53and another first officer sitting in one of the jump seats behind the two pilots. This additional

00:59first officer would take takeover from each of the pilots during the cruise, allowing them each to

01:04get some rest. The aircraft they were using was a 16-year-old Boeing 747400. Despite having been

01:11introduced in 1989, the aircraft was still pretty modern in 2005 in the cockpit. The hundreds of

01:19mechanical dials in the previous iteration of the 747 had been replaced by CRT displays, which presented

01:26the same information in a more relevant and accessible way, and which did away with the need for a flight

01:32engineer. Especially at night, the cockpit looked like something out of Star Trek. And by the way, if you're a fan of

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03:32It was a murky rainy night at LAX, and as was customary, things weren't looking much better in

03:38the UK. The pilots decided to take on an extra four tons of fuel, just in case there were delays on their

03:44arrival into London. This brought their total fuel weight for the trip up to 119 metric tons once all

03:51of the passengers had boarded, and the baggage was loaded. Flight 268 pushed back from the gate

03:58at Los Angeles. The time was about 10 minutes 9. The first officer taxied the aircraft out to runway

04:05too far left at LAX. He would be flying the plane for this trip back to the UK while the captain acted as

04:12pilot monitoring. So far, everything was going to plan. In the cabin, the passengers settled in for

04:18the long overnight flight. Most of them would be trying to get some sleep before arriving in London

04:23the next day. Nobody, neither passenger ERS nor crew, foresaw what would happen just seconds after

04:29the plane got airborne. Just after 29, the first officer lined up on the runway and pushed the jumbo's

04:36massive engines to take off. Thrust the 747 accelerated down the runway, and just over a minute

04:42later, the first officer pulled it into the sky. Then it happened just after the captain moved the

04:48gear handle. A loud repetitive thumping sound shook the aircraft. The first officer felt the aircraft

04:55swing to the left. He pushed the right rear to correct this. Passengers could see flames shooting

05:01out from under the aircraft's left wing. Immediately, the pilot saw the problem. The inboard engine on

05:07the left-hand side engine number two had started surging. An engine surge happens when there is a

05:13disruption in the airflow through the engine. The loud bangs which could be heard were from the engine

05:19backfiring. The pilots could see the exhaust gas temperature rising to dangerous levels on their

05:24instruments. They needed to act fast. The captain brought the throttle for engine two back towards the

05:31idle position. At that moment, the controller in the tower at LAX told the pilots that he could see

05:38flames shooting out from behind the engine as the captain brought the throttle back. The thumping sound

05:43stopped. The captain had experienced an engine surge in flight before, but the two other pilots had only

05:50experienced it in the simulator while this was frightening. It was not an emergency per se. The 747 has four

05:58engines and can fly very well on just three, but if a fire developed in the engine or if whatever had

06:04caused the surge began to affect the other engines, the pilots would need to declare an emergency. The

06:09captain declared a pan pan to air traffic control. This is one step below declaring an emergency. It signals

06:16that the pilots need help and that their situation is urgent. However, it falls short of declaring that the

06:23lives of the occupants are under imminent threat. The controller directed the pilots to turn so, so that

06:30they could stay close to the airport. He also told them to climb to 5,000 feet so that they would have some

06:37space to sort out their issues. The 11-hour flight was not off to a good start. After a few minutes with the

06:44aircraft stable at 5,000 feet, the pilots began planning their next steps. The best-case scenario would be if they

06:52could get the engine running properly again. The captain passed the quick reference handbook to the first

06:58officer sitting in the jump seat behind him. He began to read out the items for the captain to perform while the main first

07:05officer flew the aircraft. First, the captain selected continuous ignition on engine two, ensuring that there was a

07:13constant supply of ignition for the engine. Then he slowly advanced the throttle. The pilots were hoping that they would

07:21gradually be able to coax the engine back to full power. But as soon as the captain pushed the throttle

07:26forwards, the thumping noise resumed. It looked like they weren't going to be able to restart the engine,

07:33but there was still a chance that there just wasn't enough air getting into the engine after all.

07:39A surge is caused when the delicate mixture of fuel air and ignition is out of proportion just in case the

07:45first officer increased the aircraft speed, hoping that the increased flow of air into the engine would

07:50give it something to work with again. The captain carefully advanced the throttle for engine number

07:56two. But just like it had the previous time, the spotting resumed. The pilots had no choice. There was

08:03something seriously wrong with the engine. They would not be able to restart it. Reluctantly, the captain

08:09brought the throttle to idle and cut off the fuel supply to the engine engine. Two wound down flight

08:15268 was now flying on three engines. With the technical part of the troubleshooting out of the way,

08:22the pilots now had a different decision tree to work through. And for this they would draw not

08:28mainly on checklists, but on their own experience if they had been flying a two-engined aircraft like the

08:34Boeing 777, the British Airways also uses on its long-haul routes, the course of action at this

08:41point would be very clear. With just one engine working, they would simply dump fuel and return to

08:47Los Angeles. But on a four-engined aircraft, the loss of an engine isn't anything close to as big of a

08:53deal as it is on a two-engined aircraft. And weirdly, that put the pilots in a more difficult position

08:58because with three engines still working, there was a chance that they could make it to HEO, so they

09:03now had a decision to make should they continue the flight to HEO or should they go back and land at

09:09LAX to figure this out, the pilots first needed to gather some information. The captain sent the

09:16first officer in the jump seat back into the passenger cabin to brief the chief flight attendant,

09:21known as the cabin service director, and to look out some passenger windows to check for any damage.

09:28Meanwhile, up in the cockpit, the captain and first officer began weighing up their options,

09:33the first thing they had to determine was whether the plane would even make it a heat throw on three

09:38engines. That's because three engines don't have enough power to allow the plane to fly at its normal

09:44cruising altitude where the air is thin and the engines use less fuel. Instead, they would have

09:50to cruise at a lower altitude where the air is denser and the fuel consumption is greater after

09:55programming the engine loss into their flight management computer. It told them that they would arrive at

10:01heat throw with seven tons of fuel remaining. This was higher than the 4.5 tons which was legally required.

10:09So from that very basic standpoint of fuel, the pilots were okay to continue to heat throw,

10:15but there was much more which the pilots would have to consider than just fuel.

10:19What if they had another engine failure en route? Or what if the failed engine began to pose problems out

10:26over the open ocean as the pilots weighed this up? The first officer arrived at a passenger window on

10:32the left-hand side of the aircraft. To his disappointment, there was really very little for

10:37him to see in the darkness. Some passengers told him that they had seen flames coming out of the engine

10:43and one passenger who was a pilot said he thought it had been an engine surge. These reports from the

10:48passengers ended up being a lot more useful than anything the first officer could see out the window up the

10:54cockpit. The pilots continued their deliberations by monitoring the engine instruments. They could

11:00see that engine 2 was windmilling, normally indicating that it hadn't experienced significant structural

11:07damage. There was no indication of a fire or anything else since they had shut off the fuel supply.

11:13They also reasoned that if something else went wrong with the flight, it would probably rear its head

11:18fairly soon. That was a good thing because their route to the UK would take them out over the

11:24continental United States, which was practically brimming with diversion airports. If anything

11:30happened over the next few hours, they could easily land in Minneapolis or Chicago or Boston,

11:35or countless other airports. For this reason, there was no real reason to favor LAX. And besides,

11:42given how heavy they were, they couldn't land back at Los Angeles even if they wanted to. To return to LAX

11:48would require them to dump a huge amount of fuel, about 70 tons, that alone would take 40 minutes.

11:54And the reality of the situation was that the captain was all too aware that doing this would

11:59be a headache for the airline, both in terms of making arrangements for the 352 passengers and

12:05financially dumping 70 tons of fuel into the Pacific Ocean and returning to land at LAX, would cost the

12:12airline more than $300,000. For airline safety may be the primary concern, but $300,000 is pretty high

12:20up on the list of priorities too. The captain radioed British Airways Base at Harrow and asked them to

12:26chime in. They said that they would prefer if the fight continued, but that ultimately it was the captain's

12:33decision. Company policy dictated that the pilots should continue to their destination as long as the

12:40aircraft was in a safe condition, and it was up to the cap captain to decide that this was not an easy

12:46decision to make. The first officer came back from the cabin and informed the pilots of the situation

12:52when he described what he had encountered. It became clear that in all likelihood engine 2 had surged,

12:59but that there was no further damage the pilots used their manuals to determine that even in the highly

13:04unlikely event that another engine failed at some point along their route like out over the Atlantic,

13:10the aircraft would still be flyable, and they would be able to divert to another airport the

13:15captain called air traffic control and informed them that they were cancelling the pan situation

13:21and that they would be continuing the flight to heat their flight 268 climbed into the darkness and

13:27headed northeast two hours into the flight. The aircraft was cruising at flight level 270 or about

13:3427,000 feet. It was flying at a speed of max 75-75 percent. The speed of sound this was significantly lower

13:44and slower than it would typically fly, but it didn't pose a problem the aircraft was flying well,

13:50and nothing else had gone wrong since the flight had climbed out from Los Angeles according to the

13:55flight management computer. The plane would reach heat thrower with 10 tons of fuel remaining well above the

14:01minimum needed. Most of the passengers were asleep. The strange noises on takeoff now a distant memory

14:09as the aircraft sailed towards heat they're pretty much on schedule. The captain had taken up temporary

14:15residence in the crew bunks to get some sleep while the first officer who'd be sitting in the jump

14:19seat took his place in the left-hand seat. The plan was that when the aircraft reached the eastern

14:25seaboard of the united states the captain would return to the flight deck assess the situation and

14:30decide whether to continue out over the atlantic ocean or to divert to one of the nearby airports in

14:36the u.s if there was any sign of trouble they wouldn't take the aircraft across the ocean up until this

14:44point the flight crew had exhibited an excellent handling of the situation they had communicated well

14:50they had developed a reasonable course of action based on their informed understanding of the

14:56situation and they had kept the cabin crew and the airline in the loop but out over the atlantic things

15:03would start to go wrong and this time the problem would not be with the plane but with how the pilots had

15:09been trained before the aircraft reached the east coast of the united states the captain re-emerged onto the

15:16flight deck and took in the situation given the fuel on board the condition of the engines and the

15:22estimated fuel at heat throw all seemed well for the continuation of the flight across the atlantic ocean

15:29the pilots calculated that the most efficient altitude to fly at for the crossing was flight

15:34level 320 or about 32 000 feet the aircraft would be able to climb to this altitude given that it had burned

15:42off much of its fuel weight over the u.s however when the pilots requested this from air traffic control

15:49they were told that they couldn't be granted flight level 320 because other aircraft coming over from

15:56europe were flying at this altitude controllers could only clear them to either flight level 290 or

16:01flight level 350 flight level 350 wasn't possible on three engines given their current weight so the crew

16:10settled for flight level 290 it was a bit low and when they entered it into their flight management

16:16computer it told them that they would reach heat thrower with about seven tons of fuel remaining

16:22this was just above what the pilots had decided on as their minimum landing fuel of 6.5 tons it was

16:29looking like it would be a bit of a tight squeeze but as long as the plane performed as expected

16:35they should make it to heat all appeared well as the seven hundred forty seven cruised high above the atlantic

16:41into the sunrise of february twenty first two thousand five the pilots monitored the fuel in each of the

16:48aircraft tanks and made sure that the extra fuel from tank two the tank associated with the failed engine was

16:55distributed evenly to the other tanks by using the jettison override pumps this procedure was perfectly

17:02okay for the stage of the flight but it would soon pose problems for the crew hours later as flight

17:08268 near the coast of ireland it had 12 tons of fuel remaining the crew had climbed to flight level 350 by

17:16this point saving them some fuel however they now had a headwind and it was stronger than forecast their

17:23fight management computer was now predicting that they would have 6.5 tons of fuel upon landing in harrow

17:30this was the figure they had decided on as their minimum fuel and the point at which they would need

17:36to divert reluctantly the crew decided that they would need to divert to manchester they informed

17:42their traffic control and programmed this new route into their computer the fmc gave a landing fuel at

17:49manchester of seven tons this was just 500 kilograms more than they would have if they landed at hro the

17:56plane's original destination but margins of safety exist for a reason and bending them has led to many

18:03accidents in the past so the crew began their diversion as the aircraft descended a problem emerged

18:10tank number two had stopped stopped feeding fuel into the other tanks the pilots were already lower on

18:16fuel than they wanted to be the last thing they needed was to be unable to access the remaining fuel

18:21in tank number two their situation had just gone from bad to worse for the second time on the flight

18:28the captain declared a pan to air traffic control he needed to be given priority to land

18:34the controller cleared him to a point 10 miles from a my05 left at manchester the crew were grateful

18:41that they were already descending planes typically descend at or near idle power meaning that fuel usage is

18:48minimal nonetheless a warning then appeared on the pilot's central display telling them that the plane

18:54was running low on fuel tank number four had just 900 kilograms of fuel left the pilots didn't realize

19:01it but an issue with british airways manuals had caused this fuel imbalance problem these instructed the

19:08crew to use the jettison pumps on tank number two which they had been doing in order to transfer fuel from

19:14it to the other tanks this was different than the instructions in boeing's manuals which said that

19:20in order to get fuel to feed from an inboard main tank like tank number two to an outboard main tank like

19:26tank four it was necessary to take the aggressive action of selecting both main pumps in the outboard tank

19:34off the pilots didn't do this because they were afraid that doing that would make one of the tanks run dry

19:39it was something they might have considered in more detail if they weren't already busy with the

19:44aircraft during the descent and diversion into manchester to address the low fuel quantity warning

19:50the pilots turned all main fuel tanks on and opened the crossfield valves this allowed the fuel to flow

19:56freely between the tanks and ensured that each of the three working engines would be fed fuel at this

20:02point still in the descent towards manchester the captain was growing concerned that he might not be

20:08able to make it to the airport with the legal minimum of 4.5 tons of fuel he had not anticipated

20:14problems with the fuel balance and he certainly hadn't expected to get the low fuel quantity warning

20:20this was a far cry from the 10 tons of fuel he was supposed to have had upon landing at heo

20:26just in case he declared a mayday a full emergency to air traffic control as per british airways

20:32procedures for an emergency he took over from the first officer and began flying the aircraft in the

20:37back of the plane all the passengers knew was that they were diverting to manchester in the cockpit a

20:43tense few minutes passed as the pilots configured the aircraft for landing and continued to monitor

20:49their fuel situation the first officer was handling the radios and the other first officer in the jump

20:56seat was assisting the pilots with the increased workload from the emergency diversion at five minutes

21:01four local time flight 268 finally touched down in manchester all 352 passengers and 18 crew had

21:10arrived safely as it turns out in the end the pilots had landed with 5.8 tons of fuel remaining slightly

21:18more than the minimum required but the story doesn't end here the u.s federal aviation administration ended up

21:25bringing a court case against british airways accusing it of operating an aircraft in an unworthy condition

21:32b a maintains that the pilots of flight 268 operated the aircraft in a safe manner and in accordance with

21:39company procedure however the bad publicity which this incident caused led to b a adding one more

21:46consideration to the operational factors that the crew and the airline must take into account

21:51when making a decision to proceed or divert the potential passenger and public perception of doing so

21:57if you're wondering what the current handling of such a situation would be to today is ba's then head of

22:03safety and security tim steed said that under identical circumstances and having discussed the

22:09situation with the operations department a crew today would decide to divert to a suitable airport

22:14within north america close to their flight plan route according to steed's the crew would not have dumped

22:20fuel and return to los angeles and further if the captain chose to continue to the destination

22:27the company would leave the decision with them the investigation into this incident by the uk's air

22:32accidents investigation branch or aib found no evidence showing that the continuation of the flight

22:39posed a significant increase in risk however it did uncover deficiencies in the pilots training

22:45regarding fuel management the three pilots were not confident that all the fuel was available and

22:51their difficulties with fuel management indicated that their knowledge of the fuel system with three

22:56engines operating was insufficient as a result of this incident british airways reverted to the fuel

23:03handling procedures recommended by boeing they also added additional engine out fuel management training as

23:09part of their regular simulator training as for why engine two surged in the first place the particular

23:16variant of rolls-royce engine used on this aircraft was vulnerable to a specific type of wear whereby the

23:22engine's internal fans wore away at their casing causing a disruption in the airflow within the engine when

23:29this happens engine surges can occur especially when the engines are at a high thrust setting like they are on

23:35takeoff today's engines are even more reliable than they were in 2005 and pilots are now trained more

23:43comprehensively on how to manage fuel in situations like this however the era of the four engine passenger

23:50aircraft is coming to an end with all of the new long-haul jets having two engines it seems likely that the

23:56decision of whether to continue a flight after an engine shutdown is one that fewer and fewer pilots will have to make

BURSTING into flames seconds after takeoff - British Airways 268 Global Digestxcv

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