Hero pilots worked together to avoid disaster

10:00am Tuesday 20th May 2008

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THE heroics of the pilots in the British Airways' crash-landing drama at Heathrow earlier this year have been revealed in a BA newsletter produced for flight operations' staff.

The actions of Captain Peter Burkill, from Worcester, and his co-pilot John Coward prevented a possible catastrophe when a BA Boeing 777 suffered an engine-power problem as it came in to land at Heathrow on January 17.

The cabin crew managed to get the plane down, with the aircraft skidding along the grass before coming to rest on the start of the runway.

All 136 passengers and 16 crew were safely evacuated from the badly-damaged plane, with only one passenger suffering a serious injury.

A BA report on the flight has appeared in the monthly news letter Flight Ops News and which has been seen by the BBC.

BA was not commenting on the report today and said that its own inquiry into the incident was continuing.

The BBC said Mr Burkill changed the angles of the plane's wing flaps in order to reduce the drag on the plane.

This action helped the plane to maintain speed.

And Mr Coward pushed the plane's nose towards the ground in order to increase speed before levelling out just before the Boeing crashed on to the grass short of the runway.

The report also suggested an emergency evacuation alarm was too quiet for some of the cabin crew to hear.

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch has already produced four reports into the accident.

The latest of these - published last week, said the focus of the investigation continued to be the fuel system of both the plane and the engines "in order to understand why neither engine responded to the demanded increase in power when all of the engine control functions operated normally".