'Crossing the Atlantic With a Dead Engine' — Why I won't be flying British Airways

The headline of this post (the part in quotes) is what appeared over this past Tuesday's (March 1) Wall Street story by Scott McCartney about the bizarre occurrences surrounding British Airways Flight 268 out of Los Angeles on February 19, bound nonstop for London's Heathrow Airport.

I believe the British Airways pilots believed a bit too strongly in the importance of the "nonstop" aspect of the flight, and I think that if you should happen to make it to the end of what — at least at this juncture – appears to be shaping up to be a long, long post, you will agree with me.

So let us go now, you and I, to where airplanes fill the sky....

BA Flight 268 with 351 passengers aboard departed Los Angeles just after 9:24 p.m. on that rainy Saturday evening.

Nothing special there: LA's had record rainfall this year, far exceeding that of Seattle.

Anyway, shortly after takeoff the Boeing 747-400 experienced an unusual power surge in its No. 2 engine, located on the left side closest to the cabin.

Passengers heard two loud pops as the plane took off, one passenger told the Times of London, which wrote about the incident on February 25.

Los Angeles area residents went so far as to call the airport to report seeing sparks flying out from beneath the wing of the plane and hearing a loud "popping of engines," according to the airport.

On board the plane the pilots decided to shut down the engine.

According to McCartney's Wall Street Journal story, "The captain announced to the passengers that the plane had lost an engine and the crew was considering whether to return to continue to the U.K."

Let's stop here for a moment, all right?

Now, I'm just a [near?] brain-dead blogging anesthesiologist, not a jet pilot, but I must say that if you asked me, sitting on that plane, or even sitting here at my computer, what should happen next I'd say bring the plane right back down at LAX after clearing the runways and preparing emergency crews.

But hey, that's why I pass gas and don't fly planes.

The plane headed southwest over Santa Monica Bay, climbed to 5,000 feet, and circled over the Pacific Ocean on its three working engines for more than 20 minutes while the pilots diagnosed the problem and consulted with airline engineers in the British Airways operations center London about what to do next.

According to aviation experts, as noted in Sara Kehaulani Goo's Washington Post story of March 1, "the pilots had several choices: they could return immediately to Los Angeles International, but they would need to dump fuel over the ocean first because the plane would have been too heavy to land."

"They could continue on to another major airport such as O'Hare International Airport in Chicago or New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, where the carrier has a major presence, so mechanics could look at the engine."

"Or the crew could continue on for 11 hours to Heathrow."

"British Airways said the flight crew, in close cooperation with the airline engineers in London, chose the last option."

The jet headed north over the U.S. and Canada, up near the North Pole, then down across the Atlantic.

Now, you might be interested to know that only two days prior to this ill-starred flight the European Union had instituted a new policy of making airlines compensate passengers for delays.

The airline would have had to pay travellers €210,000 ($280,000) — €600 ($788) apiece — if they got to London's Heathrow Airport more than five hours late.

For a company teetering on the financial brink of disaster — that would be almost every major carrier in the world — that's some serious cash.

On top of which they'd have had to absorb the cost of dumping tons of expensive jet fuel from the topped-up plane and the cost of putting up the passengers and crew in hotels.

But you know all that money stuff would never have entered into the thinking of anyone associated with British Airways — right?

I mean, British Airways said in the Wall Street Journal article that the plane was safe flying on three of its four engines, and it has done the same thing before — once in April 2003, for instance, on the same Los Angeles-London route.

"Had there been any kind of a question on safety, they would have turned back to Los Angeles or gone to another U.S. airport," said British Airways spokesman John Lampl in McCartney's story.

Now why doesn't that make me feel better?

Lampl went on to say that any suggestion that the plane continued because of financial pressure from the new EU rules was "total rubbish."

I'm still not feeling better.

I must be cynical or something.

Because there are others in the airline business with a somewhat different take on the situation.

For U.S. airlines, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations require commercial airlines to land at the nearest suitable airport after an engine failure.

Gee, that's pretty straightforward: it even seems like common sense you'd expect from any fourth-grader.

Bernard Loeb, a former investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, said of British Airway's decision to fly on to the U.K., "I don't think it was an appropriate decision at all."

Barry Schiff, a retired 747 captain with TWA who has written books on proper flying procedures and is the recipient of a congressional commendation for his work on airline safety, told the Wall Street Journal, "Continuing on after an engine failure on take-off is nuts."

Huh — that's just how that fourth-grader put it. But I digress.

Unable to climb as high as planned because of the loss of the engine, the plane flew at a lower altitude across the Atlantic, increasing drag and fuel burn.

In addition, with two engines on one side of the plane but only one on the other, the plane's rudder had to be used to keep the aircraft flying straight, which increased drag as well.

The plane failed to get as much of a tail wind as the pilots expected at the lower altitude, due to strong headwinds: this too increased fuel consumption.

Hey, I'll make you a bet: the pilots didn't engage the autopilot on this flight.

At least, I hope not.

Long story longer, the plane ran low on fuel short of London and was forced to put out a Mayday distress call and divert to Manchester airport so as not to run out of fuel.

The plane was met by several firetrucks and emergency response teams and managed to make a safe emergency landing in Manchester.

Lampl, the British Airways spokesman, told the Washington Post that the decision to continue with a flight despite the loss of one of the four engines "happens infrequently."

Gee, I'm still not comforted by what I'm reading — how about you?

Well, now comes the really good part.

Today's Wall Street Journal ran another story by Scott McCartney, this one describing an eerily similar second occurrence involving the very same airplane: it was headlined, "High Anxiety, Part II: Same 747 Flies Again On Three Engines."

At first I thought maybe I was confused, and it was April Fool's Day but no, it's only March 4, so I guess it's for real.

But it's really hard to believe what transpired.

That very same British Airways Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet, registered as G-BNLG, had a repeat occurrence on its next round trip after the Februrary 19 engine failure: it lost an engine en route from Singapore to London but once again the crew continued, flying 11 hours with a dead engine.

Huh?

Same crew, I wonder?

After all, by now they should be experts at carting giant planes with hundreds of passengers and a dead engine around the world.

British Airways said Flight 18 left Singapore with 356 passengers shortly after 11:35 p.m. local time and suffered an engine failure three-and-a-half hours into the flight.

As in the Los Angeles incident on February 19, the crew communicated with the airline's operations center in London and decided to continue.

About 11 hours later, the flight landed uneventfully at London's Heathrow Airport.

British Airways spokeswoman Diana Fung said, "It's perfectly safe to fly with three engines."

The FAA said it had continued to have "concerns" about the first flight, the one emanating from Los Angeles on February 19.

Backtracking for a moment, here's what happened to the plane after its emergency landing at Manchester at the conclusion of the first episode in this ongoing saga.

1) British Airways flew the empty plane from Manchester to London.

2) Mechanics replaced the No. 2 engine.

3) The plane was returned to regular service and flew from London to Singapore.

4) On the return flight from Singapore to London the replacement No. 2 engine signaled an oil pressure warning and the pilots shut it down.

5) The flight continued as noted above, landing at London's Heathrow.

6) The replacement No. 2 engine was itself replaced and the plane was returned to service.

Fung, the British Airways spokeswoman, told the Wall Street Journal that the airline doesn't believe the engine failures are in any way related.

"It's just a strange coincidence that it was the same aircraft," she said.

The FAA said it believed the initial flight from Los Angeles to London on three engines would have violated U.S. aviation regulations but the British crew was flying a British plane under British regulations, which allowed the flight to continue.

Huh.

Maybe the crew and the FAA should have looked out the window to see if that was Missoula or Manchester out the port window. But I digress.

My thoughts on the above?

1) I can't speak for you but if I'd been seated on the left side of Flight 268 that rainy Saturday evening in Los Angeles and heard loud popping sounds and saw sparks flying from the engine right next to me, I'd sure have been anxious.

In fact, I'd have been scared, and certain there was serious danger.

So when, after flying around in circles over the Pacific Ocean for a while, the captain's voice came on and announced we were continuing to London as planned, no problema, I'd probably not have shrugged and gone to sleep.

And then, after 11 hours of anxiety that probably seemed much longer than that, when the captain came on the intercom over England and said we were running low on fuel, and were diverting to Manchester for an emergency landing, well, I'd have been just a bit less than thrilled.

You?

2) Why has there not been a single word in the New York Times, the supposed "paper of record," about the events recounted above?

3) Why is the Wall Street Journal leading the coverage of what, at least to this prospective passenger, smacks of so-called "production pressure" gone mad?

I must say that every now and then a surgeon climbs all over me about my having cancelled a case because of a very slight increased risk to the patient.

He asks, couldn't we still do it if this, that and the other?

I reply, sure we could — but I won't.

Ooh, they don't like that.

But you know what?

1) I don't care one whit about what the surgeon thinks.

2) There may be a relationship, however tenuous, to my almost pathological pursuit of the lowest risk possible for my patients and the fact that I have yet to have been sued in many, many years of very high-risk practice in tertiary-care teaching hospitals.

Ya think?

I hate to repeat hackneyed cliches, you know that, but I must say that there is one that really best sums up the British Airways adventure flights:

"When someone says it's not about the money — it's about the money."

And that's all I have to say about that.