luck at heathrow

I usually don’t write about flight news, but I have to hand it to the pilots of British Airways flight 38, which crash landed short of the runway at Heathrow today. Nobody died, no serious injuries were incurred, and crews both on the aircraft and on the ground did a superb job in getting people to safety.

From what I’ve heard, the aircraft – a Boeing 777-200ER – lost all power shortly before landing, during final approach from the west. The graphic above shows the landing point and the plane’s final resting place. The approach path into Heathrow’s south runway from the west crosses residential and business districts, as well as a major roadway intersection (Hatton Cross). The aircraft barely cleared the roadway and the perimeter fence before it made ground contact in the grassy area leading into the runway. The impact sheared off the rear landing gear, and the plane came to rest on the runway tarmac, next to the hash marks that indicate the end of the useful tarmac.

The amazing thing? Many passengers described the landing as “really rough,” but not a crash, per se. Simply amazing.

Of course, operations at Heathrow – the world’s busiest airport – are crippled with one of the runways taken offline. But nobody died, and that’s the incredible story: that the pilots guided this 200+ ton metal bird to a safe landing. As the old aviation axiom goes: any landing from which you can walk away is a good landing.

The reason I feel compelled to write about this is that many airports I use have similarly populous approach paths, with similar lack of room for error. Washington National Airport (DCA) has a convoluted approach path that requires precision piloting skills (virtually all pilots who fly airliners into DCA are ex-Navy and are carrier trained). Salt Lake City International Airport’s south approach passes over subdivision after subdivision, and is prone to wind shear. Bradley International Airport in Connecticut also passes over densely populated areas and has very short buffer zones before the runways.

And I hope that all the pilots who fly into these airports never have to do what the British Airways pilots had to do today.