Ten years ago a British Airways Boeing 777 crashed short of the runway at London Heathrow

British Airways Flight 38 (call sign Speedbird 38) is a scheduled flight operated by British Airways from Beijing, China to London, United Kingdom. On January 17, 2008, at 12:42 local time, the Boeing 777 used for the flight, having completed the 8,100-kilometre (4,400 nmi; 5,000 mi) trip, crashed just short of the runway at its destination. There were no fatalities but from the 152 people on board, 47 people sustained injuries, one of them serious. The 150-tonne aircraft was the first Boeing 777-200ER to be written off in the model’s history, and the first hull loss of any Boeing 777.

Ice crystals in the fuel were blamed as the cause of the accident, clogging the fuel-oil heat exchanger (FOHE) of each engine. This restricted fuel flow to the engines when thrust was demanded during the final approach to Heathrow.[7] Boeing identified the problem as specific to the Rolls-Royce engine fuel-oil heat exchangers, and Rolls-Royce subsequently developed a modification to its FOHE; the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) mandated that all affected aircraft were to be fitted with the modification before 1 January 2011.

Wikipedia: British Airways Flight 38

Featured image By Marc-Antony Payne – Via email, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3410822

BA 38 Crash with ATC

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