BA Concorde Twice Abandons Take Off

Ananova ^ | 3-9-2003

[blam]

BA Concorde twice abandons take off

A British Airways Concorde is flying back to the UK after it was twice forced to abandon take-off while carrying showbiz stars.

The supersonic jet twice abandoned take-off as it prepared to thunder along the runway in Barbados after a warning light flashed-up in the cockpit.

It indicated a problem in one of the jet's four thrusters, which gives the engine extra power for take-off.

Captain Derek Woodley eventually abandoned Saturday's scheduled BA Flight 272 and the 73 passengers aboard the £6,800-a-head flight were taken off the aircraft.

Some were put onto another BA Boeing 777 flying to the UK the same day, while others were put-up at the expense of BA for another night on the Caribbean island.

The passengers are believed to include actress Felicity Kendal, 56, her husband Michael Rudman and comedian Bob Monkhouse with his wife Jackie.

Engineers worked on the Concorde, Alpha Foxtrot, overnight to fix it.

The problem was located in the number three engine on its inner right-hand side.

A spokeswoman for BA in London said: "The safety of our customers is always our first concern.

"The engineers changed an electrical component and the aircraft was taxiing at a low speed, about 30mph, when the engine light illuminated again. The pilot returned the aircraft to its station and the passengers were taken off and accommodated overnight."

Following the Air France Concorde disaster in July 2000 which claimed 114 lives, BA undertook safety modifications. These have been completed on five of the firms fleet of seven Concordes.

Story filed: 20:41 Sunday 9th March 2003

[jammer]

The safety of our customers is always our first concern

Not to be cynical, but I'm betting the safety of an expensive piece of equipment is the first concern. Negative public relations from a crash are second. The customers are third. Or am I just too curmudgeonly to be allowed to post?

[Milwaukee_Guy]

Thank God it was rolling at only 30 mph. It must be scary as heck to abort a takeoff when you are nearing liftoff.

This ever happen to anyone here?

[Boundless]

>> The safety of our customers is always our first concern

> The customers are third. Or am I just too curmudgeonly...

It depends on how you define "safety".

The NASA definition seems to be: "we calculated that
it was a risk, but until yesterday it hadn't killed anyone,
so we didn't do anything about it".

BA&AF had lots of prior warning about the risks fully
realized in the Paris Concorde crash.

Unfortunately, there's no cockpit warning light for:
"this machine has fatal design flaws".

[boris]

"It indicated a problem in one of the jet's four thrusters, which gives the engine extra power for take-off."

Inaccurate. They apparently refer to afterburners.

AFAIK, the Concorde is the only non-military jet to use afterburners.

--Boris

[tom paine 2]

This happened to me about 15 years ago in Las Vegas. I was on a 727 leaving Vegas with a bunch of hung over gamblers. The plane got about half way down the runway when one of the engines made a loud pop sound. I saw a lot of people sober up quick, when we had to brake real quick.

[VRWC For Truth]

BA has obviously hired some NASA brass.

[dfc62]

Happened to me once, going from Manchester to Edinburgh. We were accelerating down the runway when the skipper cut the engines and put the brakes on before taxing back to the terminal.

They put us on a completely different flight about 2 hours
later, I certainly would have been really wary about getting on the same plane that day.

[RightOnline]

"Thank God it was rolling at only 30 mph. It must be scary as heck to abort a takeoff when you are nearing liftoff.

This ever happen to anyone here?"

Yes. Not fun.

[Grut]

It must be scary as heck to abort a takeoff when you are nearing liftoff.

At that point, it's too late; you can't stop inside the confines of the runway because you've used most of it up and you're going too fast. Aircrews check the plane's actual accelleration against its calculated accelleration at much lower speeds and abort at that point if they don't match.

[Milwaukee_Guy]

Wow, that Vegas flight sounds scary. I got a funny mental picture though of all the drunks with their faces mashed into the setback in front of them.

Hey what's going mummmmpf, mummmmpf, what da, mummmmpf....

Glad you got through it ok!

[Boundless]

> ...it was rolling at only 30 mph. It must be scary as
> heck to abort a takeoff when you are nearing liftoff.
> This ever happen to anyone here?

Yep. As pilot, I had my seat pop out of detent and slide
back right at rotation (lift off). Fortunately, it was just
a single-engine Cessna, with ample remaining runway
to abort.

I had also been advised that another pilot had written up
the plane for the same problem, but it had been "fixed".
I wasn't so sure, so I had a plan...

...and a plan was necessary, because the natural reaction
would be to pull back on the yoke to restrain the seat slide,
which could be expected to at least result in a tail strike,
and at worst a stall and/or steep tail slide into the runway.

Unnerving, all the same.

[Salgak]

No, but it happened to a colleague of mine, and I was on the flight-line that day (it was in the USAF). The B-52's brakes on one "truck" were wired backwards, and thus dragging the aircraft. They were just under "committ" speed, also known as S-1, and rapidly running out of runway. They stood on the brakes, popped the drag chute, trailing molten copper from the stuck brakes, and went off the end of the runway. The crew compartment/nose snapped off the fuselage (but did not separate, the engine throttle and control-line wires didn't break). The crew evacuated the aircraft via the overhead escape/ejection hatches, with the engines still running: maitenance and the base Crash truck had to hack into all 4 engine pods to cut the fuel lines off. Minor injuries, physically, and the loss of an aircraft. Two of the students onboard the jet ended up turning in their wings afterwards. . . . and were medically discharged with psychological problems. My buddy wasn't one of the two, but he WAS pretty banged up. . .

[RWG]

The passengers are believed to include actress Felicity Kendal, 56, her husband Michael Rudman and comedian Bob Monkhouse with his wife Jackie...who?

[VOA]

Peter Greenburg ("The Travel Detective") commented today that "If you want to fly the
Concorde, book your flight quick. The operational days of the Concorde are probably numbered".

Greenburg does a two hour "travel" show on KABC 790AM (major talk radio station
owned by Disney; www.kabc.com) and he's pretty much a "straight shooter" on travel/tourism
matters. He appears occassionally on NBC's Today Show.

Greenburg also said that one contributing factor to the end of the useful life of the Concorde
is that much of the advance/innovation of civil aviation lives off what happens in
military aviation research.
He said something like "the military is into stealth craft...and that isn't going
to translate into revolutionary products for civil aviation".
(Greenburg was giving proper credit to all the brave/brainy test engineers/pilots of
the military...he was NOT blaming them for the likely end of the Concorde...)

[Boundless]

>> ...abort a takeoff when you are nearing liftoff

> At that point, it's too late; you can't stop inside
> the confines of the runway because you've used most
> of it up and you're going too fast.

That depends on the airport, but generally, the takeoff
decision speed (V1) is lower than the rotation speed (Vr).

Aborting a takeoff below V1 is always theoretically
possible. Aborting above it is usually not recommended
if the runway length is near "Balanced Field Length"
(go around once instead).

> Aircrews check the plane's actual accelleration against
> its calculated accelleration at much lower speeds and
> abort at that point if they don't match.

Military crews do this.
Do civil crews also do it now?
Are civil airports signed for it?

This was raised as an issue when Air Florida flt 90
developed insufficient power on a departure from
Wash Nat (now Reagan), and ended up in the Potomac.

Had they been working an acceleration progress list
against runway markings, they would have realized
they had a problem, and either aborted, or firewalled
the throttles. Either would have saved them.

[Milwaukee_Guy]

Compelling story! Sorry to hear about your buddies injuries. Sounds like the crew did the absolute best they could given the lousy situation they were presented with.

Question, S1? I remember movies where the pilots used the term R1, R2 and R3. I think it denoted meant "rotation". R1 being the earliest, R2 being optimum and R3 the latest part of the runway one could safely take off.

Is "S1" the military version?

[Kviteseid]

Isn't it appropriate to question the capability of the French to provide an adequate platform to serve as a safe means of transport for passengers at US airports??

Why isn't this the smoking gun... to pull the switch on French access to our airspace and airports?

[strela]

It must be scary as heck to abort a takeoff when you are nearing liftoff. This ever happen to anyone here?

(sea story alert)

Oh yeah. 1988, Yakota AFB, C-5B Galaxy. I was in the upper deck, flying Space A, waiting to take off to go back to the States for leave. I was told later that the aircraft was within 15 MPH of rotate speed, at full thrust going down the runway, when the inboard port engine partially sheared off and hung down from the plane, part of it dragging down the runway. I couldn't see what happened, but I still remember a loud bang and the plane lurching. The divots and pieces of metal we saw all over the runway the next day were pretty impressive.

After we were evacuated and everybody got back to the terminal, it took almost a week to get another flight. And, you lose your seat if you leave and they call your name. So, I sat in the MAC terminal for 6 days (couple of hours break every day for meals/shower, in my whites, on call) until another flight came up.

[WIladyconservative]

I was on a DC-10 headed for Europe in the 80's that aborted a takeoff due to weather. Don't know how close we were to take-off, but we were going fast enough to push you back in the seat. All of a sudden we were all flung forward (thank heaven for seatbelts), and drastically slowed down.

The pilot taxied around, waited a bit and took off. We found out after we were in the air that there was a thunderstorm in the path of our take off.

I'm still not very keen on flying . . .