It takes a lot to impress British Airways. Losing all your flight instruments at night, for example, hardly merits a mention. Respect!
So, in this story an A319 crew is climbing out of Heathrow on a clear night when suddenly everything goes dark. No flight instruments at all, a standby horizon that it seems almost certainly wasn't illuminated, and just the external horizon to fly by. No radios either.
Unsurprisingly the captain, aged 53, with 11,800 total hours and 4,000 on-type, coped serenely. When the power equally mysteriously returned after a couple of minutes, he spent 40 minutes in the hold fruitlessly investigating the problem and then pressed on to Budapest.
In Hungary, BA's engineers failed to find a fault and cheerfully put the aircraft back into service. The pilots duly filed a mandatory occurrence report and life carried on much as usual.
When the MOR landed at the CAA however the reaction was less relaxed. Not long after it was at the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, and not long after that the aircraft was grounded with Farnborough's finest climbing all over the avionics.
I doubt that my mortal flesh is ever in safer hands than when it's securely inside a BA aircraft, and particularly with a 12,000 hour, silver-templed veteran guiding us through the skies - night or otherwise. But I think there will be some debate over this one.
I was, quite frankly, shocked that the captain chose to continue to BUD after power mysteriously came back on. Maybe in this case, having all that experience hardened the captain somewhat and made him feel invinceable.
We all know that in aviation "discretion is the better part of valor". Prudence, it would seem, would have called for an immediate landing back at Heathrow, and probably an emergency should have been declared. This incident, along with the two (?) incidents of BA 747s continuing on their routes after losing an engine, should be a cause for concern. If similar incidents had happened at a carrier based in a developing country, everyone would say "What do you expect ?" and "typical lack of discipline" etc. It seems that just because it is BA, we shouldnｴt assume that whatever their crew chose to do must have been the right choice under the circumstances. Further investigation, it seems, is warranted.
Philip Perry
Why didn't he divert back to LHR? Probably because he was already nearer BUD? (or was the "40 minutes on hold" actually going round in circles over the North Sea - I doubt it!
"Power mysteriously came back"? Or were the drew re-setting, re-booting the systems and that got it back? I really doubt that they were doing nothing.
"Well done" to the crew - and that's from someone who worked for the "Speedbird" when it really Was! (and who rarely has too many good words for the company)
Sounds to me like the Skipper and his Right-Hander were the sort of professionals that keep avaition athe safest way to travel
Stu Nutt
Stu Nutt - pay attention, dear boy. The A319 was only 8 minutes into the flight, which would have barely put it past Tunbridge Wells, and certainly nowhere near Budapest.
Spanner Man
Do you like to be a passenger in an aircraft where suddenly the light is switched OFF and mysteriously after some minutes the power returns without any explanation. During this time of the year there is not always a clear horizon when taking off.
Of course much respect for the cockpit crew who solved this situation.
Fred Maas
This reminds me of an incident relayed to me of an RAF Sunderland flying boat on a long overwater flight in the Far East which suffered a potentailly catastrophic but fortunately momentary total electrical failure. My informant confesed that he had accidentally pulled the 'ground/flight' switch in the galley to 'ground' while making an urn of coffee but had the wit to return it to 'flight' once he ralised what happened. The captain called a 'pan' and diverted to have the fault exhaustively investigated (the culprit having failed to own up) as he rather fancied three days ashore. He assured me that this was true and the air force was never the wiser, so human error is always in the 'cause' frame.
Adam Gardiner