Surely not?? BA LHR - Houston RTB

[WHBM]

Extensive coverage now of a 787 on LHR-Houston which turned back to London over Labrador due to a "minor tech" incident

G-ZBKN - Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner - British Airways - Flightradar24 (https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/g-zbkn#359b9ec8)

British Airways passengers endure 'nine-hour flight to nowhere' after plane returns to Heathrow within miles of destination (msn.com) (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/travel/news/british-airways-passengers-endure-nine-hour-flight-to-nowhere-after-plane-returns-to-heathrow-within-miles-of-destination/ar-BB1o4Ree?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=15e686ce9dc64901b5710a7a89f4a9b9&ei=63)

Difficult to imagine what sort of tech issue prevents continuing to destination, but allows them to turn and make an ETOPS-compliant return Atlantic crossing. One presumes that the "forced" return was not such, and was wholly decided for the convenience of Operations.

Bland statements of passengers being rebooked are subject to qualification at BA, as my own experience with them is they just look for availability in your own booking class, and you will be delayed as long as it takes for there to be availability, which with a once-daily flight booked pretty full can be days (three in our case last year).

[DaveReidUK]

Someone obviously took the view that the overall cost (compensation, reputation, etc vs the disruption caused by potentially having an AOG 4000 miles from base) worked out in favour of the RTB.

Whatever the issue was (reportedly engine-related) it presumably would allow continued safe flight but require maintenance action after landing before further operation.

I can see the logic behind BA's decision (the aircraft was on the ground at LHR less than an hour after it had been scheduled to land at IAH), but then I wasn't a passenger on the flight.

[pax britanica]

Evening standard carries a report of BA passengers 9 hour flight to nowhere today

BA flight to Houston had a tech problem close to Canadian border and turned back to LHR , No doubt to avoid things like crew duty hours if it just diverted to ORD or JFK but it does seem quite extraordinary to take passengers all the way back to Heathrow. Any thought given to their interests at all?

Of course journalistic excellence may have distorted some things to do with it as the article quotes it is only 30-40 minutes from the turn back point to Houston (do they really know how big America is . Apologies if a duplicate

[TartinTon]

"Within miles of destination" A large degree of latitude in that statement! I make it about 2,500 miles from destination compared to 2,300 back to LHR
Clearly the "journalist" has no clue when it comes to geography

[LOWI]

Not true.
The Daily Fail reported that it had a double engine failure, flew back to LHR for several hours whilst on fire and then landed whilst narrowingly avoiding a school full of babies.

Also another story that a couple were on a stranded aircraft for hours whilst the plane was on the runway... or do they mean apron/taxiway? 🤔

In the meantime, BA are still waiting for some stairs in Bermuda and a US pilot declared an emergency by not saying the magical phrase...

Anyway that's enough internet for me for today!

[EI-mech]

It appears to be true. BA195 on the 10th of June:

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/1911x773/ba_872fa852e7a28892b90c2a7b74f0fdba09574d7c.jpg

[magyar_flyer]

It certainly did happen

There is certainly a money related explanation.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I hope the passengers got the frequent flier points for all the milage :p

[AirportPlanner1]

The journalist might well be clueless as to geography (aren’t they clueless about everything?) but there is no excuse for what happened unless someone is an apologist for BA management.

Points about disruption and reputation don’t really stack up. If the flight carried on they would have completed one flight but presumably had to heavily delay or cancel the return. As it stands they heavily disrupted the outbound pax, flying them for 19+ hours plus time on the ground, and still badly delayed or cancelled the return leg. A u-turn of this nature on the cusp of overflying North American soil was always going to end up in the press.

[FUMR]

I once had 5.5 hrs to nowhere, but 9 is something else!

[Fursty Ferret]

No doubt to avoid things like crew duty hours if it just diverted to ORD or JFK but it does seem quite extraordinary to take passengers all the way back to Heathrow. Any thought given to their interests at all?

Scenario 1: Fly a further three hours and land in the continental US. Aircraft AOG, possibly for weeks, if engine related issue that requires significant RR input (no idea if they have a permanent presence and spare engines at LHR but assume so). Connecting flights to Houston need to be booked for 200+ pax, and if that’s not possible on the day, hotel accommodation. Passengers need to clear immigration at random arrival airport which will not be happy, and bags / freight need to be reconciled.

Scenario 2: Fly five hours back to the UK, next aircraft ready to depart with crew called from standby, faulty aircraft at main base for quick repair, all passengers get to Houston together at about the same time as they would anyway if they’d all been rebooked on domestic flights.

[BleedingOn]

Scenario 2a: on the way back over the entire Atlantic, the misbehaving engine gets worse and requires shutting down, or worse still the other engine starts playing up. Seems like quite a fine balance of risk/reward on this one, but obviously we don’t know the exact nature of the engine problem.

[DuncanDoenitz]

See also Air France AF174 on 8 May; A350 F-HUVC, CDG to Mexico City. Turned back to CDG over Newfoundland. Not exceptional.

[Downwind_Left]

The journalist might well be clueless as to geography (aren’t they clueless about everything?) but there is no excuse for what happened unless someone is an apologist for BA management.

Points about disruption and reputation don’t really stack up. If the flight carried on they would have completed one flight but presumably had to heavily delay or cancel the return. As it stands they heavily disrupted the outbound pax, flying them for 19+ hours plus time on the ground, and still badly delayed or cancelled the return leg. A u-turn of this nature on the cusp of overflying North American soil was always going to end up in the press.

But you’ve failed to consider the knock on effects of having an aircraft AOG down route and out of action for days… potentially disrupting many more passengers. These things are often more quickly and easily dealt with at base. Do you think airlines turn planes around for fun?

In this case they’re on the hook for disruption assistance and compensation for both the outbound and inbound passengers. If the flight had continued to IAH, the wider knock ons may have been far greater in terms of inconvenience and disruption.

[TURIN]

The journalist might well be clueless as to geography (aren’t they clueless about everything?) but there is no excuse for what happened unless someone is an apologist for BA management.

Points about disruption and reputation don’t really stack up. If the flight carried on they would have completed one flight but presumably had to heavily delay or cancel the return. As it stands they heavily disrupted the outbound pax, flying them for 19+ hours plus time on the ground, and still badly delayed or cancelled the return leg. A u-turn of this nature on the cusp of overflying North American soil was always going to end up in the press.
I'm no apologist for BA, management or anyone else, but you must be able to understand how much disruption an AOG away from main base causes. Hiring a hangar, if available, booking a team of engineers and mechanics on to already busy flights along with spares, tooling etc. Hotel accommodation for same. Getting an airside pass, even a temporary one can take hours or even days in some countries. Then you've got the crew, now out of position with the knock on effect it causes.
I'd say this was a very good decision.

[Lascaille]

I'd say this was a very good decision.

Are there many examples of this type of decision having been made in the past?

I mean, if it's a very good decision it should be a frequent occurrence.

The news reporting (which suggests that it's really not common at all) indicates the contrary.

It seems to me that an airline the size of BA should just be able to manage and I'm sure has many maintenance agreements with firms in the US, a destination they musts serve with what, tens of flights per day?

[easyflyer83]

Are there many examples of this type of decision having been made in the past?

I mean, if it's a very good decision it should be a frequent occurrence.

The news reporting (which suggests that it's really not common at all) indicates the contrary.

It seems to me that an airline the size of BA should just be able to manage and I'm sure has many maintenance agreements with firms in the US, a destination they musts serve with what, tens of flights per day?

It does tend to happen from time to time. KL had a similar one a few months ago, returned to AMS.

[aeromech3]

My experience, though in 1980's as Manager in a Line Control Office with telex, HF radio comms, but remote telephone links (Engineers did not have mobiles on the ramp and were often far away from the ramp office), all too often the Engineer controller would opt for an on-route overflight or return to a suitable maintenance base (LHR, BOM, AUH, BAH, HNG) rather than face the aircraft recovery workload when the defect would be outside MEL after landing.
Mid 1980's Commercial Management decided and I think rightfully so, that the passengers on-board had a right to arrive at their destination!
BA would have had Maintrol in those days and experienced personnel with back-up.
Cannot fathom this particular return to LHR, we are not discussing a 3rd World destination which would have been the likes of Dhaka, Lahore and Tunis on my watch where we had no spares or our own Engineer personnel.

[WHBM]

Scenario 1: Fly a further three hours and land in the continental US. Aircraft AOG, possibly for weeks, if engine related issue that requires significant RR input (no idea if they have a permanent presence and spare engines at LHR but assume so).
It's a bit difficult to reconcile a "minor" issue that requires a return to base from so far away, quite OK and trivial apparently to start a complete ETOPS Atlantic crossing, but which nevertheless would take weeks to sort out in Houston.

[DaveReidUK]

By all means criticise the disruption to pax, but (aside from uninformed speculation) I can't see any posts that provide the slightest evidence that safety margins were compromised in any way by the decision to RTB.

[DC3 Dave]

It's a bit difficult to reconcile a "minor" issue that requires a return to base from so far away, quite OK and trivial apparently to start a complete ETOPS Atlantic crossing, but which nevertheless would take weeks to sort out in Houston.

It is difficult. A Boeing aircraft at a major US airport cannot get sorted if a minor issue occurs.

Without knowing very much this is surely a decision based on knock-on costs. Reset. Take the pain. Stay in control.

[WHBM]

By all means criticise the disruption to pax, but (aside from uninformed speculation) I can't see any posts that provide the slightest evidence that safety margins were compromised in any way by the decision to RTB.
I think that identifying an issue developing on board that was incapable of being readily resolved at destination and required a Return To Base, and was possibly beyond the MEL list for dispatch, but then COMMENCING (from where they were overhead Labrador) an ETOPS oceanic transit, just doesn't add up in "safety margin" terms.

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.

[pax britanica]

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 -

[nnc0]

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.

[pax britanica]

Bomb threat is surely a Land ASAP item , undesirable person -well the Feds can just pick him up when the plane lands can't they .

[easyflyer83]

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.

I think that’s quite unlikely if I’m honest.

[Airbanda]

Bomb threat is surely a Land ASAP item , undesirable person -well the Feds can just pick him up when the plane lands can't they .

I think if somebody is 'blacklisted' for the US then landing them there is a no no. Wasn't there an incident involving a well known UK Muslim convert and an RTB similar to this not that long after 9/11?.

Having flown UK-Houston I can confirm that the first sight of the American continent around Labrador was less than half way timewise.

[SWBKCB]

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.

[nnc0]

Bomb threat is surely a Land ASAP item , undesirable person -well the Feds can just pick him up when the plane lands can't they .

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.

[pax britanica]

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.

[andymartin]

Surely it would have landed somewhere remote like Gander if it was a security issue?

[ETOPS]

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….

[aeromech3]

Health issue seen by RR with an engine, hope it was not an ETOPS home routing!

[atakacs]

So my understanding is that we have a situation by which, by remote monitoring, the RR engineers concluded that


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

Based on that assessment they concluded that their best course of action was to return to LHR.

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.