A British Airways pilot who has been hailed as a hero following his calm response to a fire on the plane he was captaining, has said that he is “finished with flying”.
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The captain, Chris Henkey, 63, from Reading, Berkshire, has 42 years of flying experience with BA and was on his penultimate flight before leaving the profession.
The British Airways Boeing 777, carrying 170 passengers and crew, may have experienced a mechanical failure that tore apart the engine, spitting flames and segments of hot metal into the fuselage, located just under the cabin, experts said.
In this photograph taken from the view of a plane window, smoke billows out from a plane that caught fire at McCarren global Airport, on Tuesday, in Las Vegas. The plane was filled with fuel for its lengthy journey but didn’t explode. All 157 passengers on board escaped safely using the plane’s inflatable slides, along with 10 crew members and three pilots.
Crews of both planes were commended for their actions but as the statistics show, there have been incidents where pilots have partly caused fatal crashes.
The fireplace on trip 2276 was noticed soon after 4pm along with a saving of the trade with air-traffic control of Henkey was launched which confirmed how effectively the crisis was managed.
The National Transportation Safety Board said investigators discovered several parts of the engine’s compressor, along with damage to its armored outer shell. “We have a fire”.
In its statement, General Electric said based on the engine fleet’s service history, it was not aware of “any operational issues that would hazard the continued safe flight of aircraft powered by these engines”.
As of last night, Henkey was still in Las Vegas, staying in a hotel room while investigators look into the cause of Tuesday’s incident. They gathered at the British Airways ticket counter at McCarran worldwide Airport’s Terminal 3, waiting for word on when they would be able to board the new flight.
The 63-year-old, who is due to retire next week, shut down the throttles after a “catastrophic engine fire” sent the Boeing 777 up in flames. By the end of 2013, the aircraft had been flown for 76,618 hours, according to the British Civil Aviation Authority.
Engine fires are unusual but not unheard-of.
GE Aviation said its GE90 engines are used in most Boeing 777s.
“It has a remarkably good safety record”, he said of the 777 model, first introduced in 1994.
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Cox said a breach in the engine casing could have crippled the effectiveness of a chemical system to snuff out an engine fire in flight.
