BA crew praised in air incident reports
30.06.10
Two British Airways pilots have been praised for pulling a plane out of a stall during a 192mph take-off, saving passengers’ lives. The Boeing 747-400, bound for Heathrow with 283 people on board, hit trouble when slats on its wings retracted unexpectedly, a South African Civil Aviation Authority report released yesterday said.
The jet lost a ‘significant amount of lift’ and the plane’s stick shaker - which warns of an imminent stall - began vibrating. Instead of doing a standard climb, the pilots switched to a shallow ascent until the slats redeployed and the plane speeded up. They then returned to Tambo airport, Johannesburg for engineers to inspect the plane.
The report said: ‘The flying crew should be commended for the professional way they controlled the aircraft during a critical stage, during take-off. The flight-deck crew had no indication of what had caused the lack in performance of the aircraft.’
An internal inquiry by BA after the scare on May 11 last year found sensors on the plane had sent the wrong signals to the slats, which normally retract on landing. Boeing has issued a bulletin to pilots on the issue. A BA spokesman said: ‘We are extremely proud of the crew. They are a credit to the airline.’
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