Seconds from disaster - British Midland Flight 92 Motorway Plane Crash (The Kegworth air disaster)
- 6 years ago
The Kegworth air disaster occurred when a Boeing 737-400 crashed on to the embankment of the M1 motorway near Kegworth, Leicestershire, England, while attempting to make an emergency landing at East Midlands Airport on 8 January 1989.
British Midland Flight 92 was on a scheduled flight from London Heathrow Airport to Belfast Airport, when a fan-blade broke in the left engine, disrupting the air conditioning and filling the flight deck with smoke. The pilots believed that this indicated a fault in the right engine, since earlier models of the 737 ventilated the flight-deck from the right, and they were unaware that the 400 used a different system. The crew mistakenly shut down the good engine, and pumped more fuel into the malfunctioning one, which burst into flames. Of the 126 people aboard, 47 died and 74 sustained serious injuries.
The inquiry attributed the blade fracture to metal fatigue, caused by heavy vibration in the newly upgraded engines, which had only been tested in the laboratory and not under representative flight conditions.
After taking off from Heathrow at 19:52, Flight BD 092 was climbing through 28,300 feet to reach its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet when a blade detached from the fan of the port (left) CFM International CFM56 engine. While the pilots did not know the source of the problem, a pounding noise was suddenly heard, accompanied by severe vibrations. In addition, smoke poured into the cabin through the ventilation system and a burning smell entered the plane. Several passengers sitting near the rear of the plane noticed smoke and sparks coming from the left engine.
The flight was diverted to nearby East Midlands Airport at the suggestion of British Midland Airways Operations.
After the initial blade fracture, Captain Kevin Hunt had disengaged the plane's autopilot. When Hunt asked First Officer David McClelland which engine was malfunctioning, McClelland replied: "It's the left.... It's the right one". In previous versions of the 737, the left air conditioning pack, fed with compressor bleed air from the left (number 1) engine, supplied air to the flight deck, while the right air conditioning pack, fed from the right (number 2) engine supplied air to the cabin. On the 737-400 this division of air is blurred; the left pack feeds the flight deck but also feeds the aft cabin zone, while the right feeds the forward cabin. The pilots had been used to the older version of the aircraft and did not realise that this aircraft (which had only been flown by British Midland for 520 hours over a two-month period) was different. The captain later claimed that his perception of smoke as coming forward from the cabin led them to assume the fault was in the right engine. The pilots throttled back the working right engine instead of the malfunctioning left engine. They had no way of visually checking the engines from the cockpit, and the cabin crew .
British Midland Flight 92 was on a scheduled flight from London Heathrow Airport to Belfast Airport, when a fan-blade broke in the left engine, disrupting the air conditioning and filling the flight deck with smoke. The pilots believed that this indicated a fault in the right engine, since earlier models of the 737 ventilated the flight-deck from the right, and they were unaware that the 400 used a different system. The crew mistakenly shut down the good engine, and pumped more fuel into the malfunctioning one, which burst into flames. Of the 126 people aboard, 47 died and 74 sustained serious injuries.
The inquiry attributed the blade fracture to metal fatigue, caused by heavy vibration in the newly upgraded engines, which had only been tested in the laboratory and not under representative flight conditions.
After taking off from Heathrow at 19:52, Flight BD 092 was climbing through 28,300 feet to reach its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet when a blade detached from the fan of the port (left) CFM International CFM56 engine. While the pilots did not know the source of the problem, a pounding noise was suddenly heard, accompanied by severe vibrations. In addition, smoke poured into the cabin through the ventilation system and a burning smell entered the plane. Several passengers sitting near the rear of the plane noticed smoke and sparks coming from the left engine.
The flight was diverted to nearby East Midlands Airport at the suggestion of British Midland Airways Operations.
After the initial blade fracture, Captain Kevin Hunt had disengaged the plane's autopilot. When Hunt asked First Officer David McClelland which engine was malfunctioning, McClelland replied: "It's the left.... It's the right one". In previous versions of the 737, the left air conditioning pack, fed with compressor bleed air from the left (number 1) engine, supplied air to the flight deck, while the right air conditioning pack, fed from the right (number 2) engine supplied air to the cabin. On the 737-400 this division of air is blurred; the left pack feeds the flight deck but also feeds the aft cabin zone, while the right feeds the forward cabin. The pilots had been used to the older version of the aircraft and did not realise that this aircraft (which had only been flown by British Midland for 520 hours over a two-month period) was different. The captain later claimed that his perception of smoke as coming forward from the cabin led them to assume the fault was in the right engine. The pilots throttled back the working right engine instead of the malfunctioning left engine. They had no way of visually checking the engines from the cockpit, and the cabin crew .