18 January 2008

More on BA038. Airframe headed for Steptoe and Son.

Despite the great performance of the BA flight crew:
Captain Peter Burkill
Sr FO John Coward
FO Conor Magenis
...It is unlikely that the British Airways 777 is salvageable. It is currently being chopped up in situ into chunks small enough to haul away. With the collapse of he undercarriage and the significant impact on the engines - the latter are also likely not to be candidates for reuse.

As far as we can tell according to several databases this represents only the second 777 to be removed from flying. The first - an ex Varig 777 was so clapped out when returned to the owner that is was sold for scrap. Out of a total of 687 delivered that is not a bad record.

It shows the robustness of the design and it cannot be stressed strongly enough the correct interaction of the major factors: Crew training, Airplane strength. For BA with 43 -er make that 42 of both GE (29) and RR (16) powered airframes, they and all other operators will want to know what happened.

So do we

Cheers

Timothy

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