Surely not?? BA LHR - Houston RTB
Without knowing very much this is surely a decision based on knock-on costs. Reset. Take the pain. Stay in control.
Thread Starter
After returning on Monday 10 June the aircraft doesn't appear to have been flown again, four days later, so whatever the issue was is either non-trivial, or the capability to resolve it promptly was not available at Heathrow. Neither of these seem to justify recrossing an ocean. Interesting they had fuel for the longer trip to Houston. Had they been heading for New York presumably they would not.
Last edited by WHBM; 13th Jun 2024 at 14:22.
Very interesting discussion and a reflection of a couple of things I guess
Modern a/c 787. A350 can quite easily return to base 5 hours into a flight , they were only about half way to Houston in this case and with that in mind the BA decision seems more logical if they were confident that they could very quickly turn things around with a second aircraft . In my mind when I posted my comment was that BA had/ have a pretty comprehensive tech support at JFK but I am not sure they operate 787s there mostly 772-773.
Turning round to fly back across the Atlantic with an a/c with some form of significant fault -which one must presume must be the case to prompt such action - rather than continuing to destination overland with airports every 100 miles or so which would no doubt have been much better for the PAx -
Modern a/c 787. A350 can quite easily return to base 5 hours into a flight , they were only about half way to Houston in this case and with that in mind the BA decision seems more logical if they were confident that they could very quickly turn things around with a second aircraft . In my mind when I posted my comment was that BA had/ have a pretty comprehensive tech support at JFK but I am not sure they operate 787s there mostly 772-773.
Turning round to fly back across the Atlantic with an a/c with some form of significant fault -which one must presume must be the case to prompt such action - rather than continuing to destination overland with airports every 100 miles or so which would no doubt have been much better for the PAx -
I'm having a hard time believing this was a technical issue - engine trouble and then a return across the Atlantic on a non ETOPS route?. I'm more inclined to believed there were socio-political reasons for the turnback. An undesirable on the do not fly list or a bomb threat or toxic substance or.....It is the US after all.
Last edited by nnc0; 13th Jun 2024 at 12:06.
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I'm having a hard time believing this was a technical issue - engine trouble and then a return across the Atlantic on a non ETOPS route?. I'm more inclined to believed there were socio-political reasons for the turnback. An undesirable on the do not fly list or a bomb threat or toxic substance or.....It is the US after all.
Having flown UK-Houston I can confirm that the first sight of the American continent around Labrador was less than half way timewise.
Surely more likely that there was a technical issue that while not impacting that flight was going to involve a maintenance proceedure that meant the aircraft couldn't fly again for a while. If so, home base is the obvious place. If it was "socio-political reasons" the aircraft would have been flying again in hours, where in fact it's not flown again since it landed.
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I don't want to go into our procedures but a bomb threat is not necessarily a LAND ASAP item. And I don't think many nations would allow an aircraft with a suspected bomb on board and god knows what hazardous goods might be in the belly into their airspace or near their airports where more damage could be done. And we have lots of examples of air turnbacks in the past once homeland security found an undesirable on the pax list. I must admit it happens much less now but I don't think it has stopped entirely.
i dont find the idea of not landing quickly very comfortable if theres a bomb on board but I suppose landing at some isolated location Canada wouldnt be a problem in this situation except of the course the plane is now in the middle of no where . The Feds waiting for the plane was tongue in cheek although no doubt depending who the undesirable was the US would make their own mind up at the time.
All finished? So the decision to return was advised by RR who monitor all their 787 engines in real time. Thus the flight crew, Maintrol and ops will have been consulted and consensus arrived at. By returning the pax to LHR they would have the best opportunity to complete their journey as opposed to, say, a couple of nights in Churchill or worse still JFK….
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So my understanding is that we have a situation by which, by remote monitoring, the RR engineers concluded that
The alternative being to pre-emptively send a relief aircraft and crew to Houston (I don't know if BA has a such a capability in the US, a standing agreement with some US carrier or has to actually scramble it from the UK).
Obviously the later option would incur significantly more costs, costs that are, in the big scheme of things, eventually passed to the fare paying passengers (and/or the shareholders...). On the other hand it would have resulted in amuch better passenger experience (on both legs), and, with the right PR spin, show that BA is actually doing the "right thing" vs being the sad bean counters that we all take them to be.
- there was an issue developing on one or both engines
- that the issue was not serious enough to require a precautionary landing and could support a RTB over the north Atlantic or a continuation to destination (as they were pretty much midway) but would most likely preclude them flying the return leg
The alternative being to pre-emptively send a relief aircraft and crew to Houston (I don't know if BA has a such a capability in the US, a standing agreement with some US carrier or has to actually scramble it from the UK).
Obviously the later option would incur significantly more costs, costs that are, in the big scheme of things, eventually passed to the fare paying passengers (and/or the shareholders...). On the other hand it would have resulted in amuch better passenger experience (on both legs), and, with the right PR spin, show that BA is actually doing the "right thing" vs being the sad bean counters that we all take them to be.
