We won’t know about the RAT until the AAIB report is published probably, or perhaps an interview with the PIC?

We turned up this picture early today over at heathrowpictures.com which shows the Ram Air Turbine outside of the aircraft with apparently slightly bent blades indicating that it may have been deployed and in operation at the time of the impact with the grass.

(The RAT is the small bladed device bent sideways just aft of the large rip in the fuselage/wingroot)

From what I have read and seen so far, I think the man did a great job to get the aircraft onto the grass, but I believe a piece of luck is also there, since the undercarriage caused serious damage to the wing roots, particularly on the left hand side. That there was no fire (as there was very likely still quite a bit of fuel in the wing tanks) is quite simply luck…

It is good to read that there were no fatalities. This one, like the Air France A340 at Pearson that ran off the runway in bad weather, could have ended a lot worse than it did! Great job by the cabin and flightdeck crew, and to the Heathrow fire brigade for being on the scene so fast!

Andrew Entwistle

3 Flight Control Systems with their own batteries…

Both Engines Failed???

Something just doesn’t add up here…

Lack of Fuel? Who knows…

The lack of brace command may, as with a windshear event, be down to timing.

Having two engines go quiet on you short final is nasty. As I was once instructed, first and foremost, get your nose down to preserve the airspeed and then assess. You’ve instantly started to lose the energy that would keep you on the normal glideslope and so you must now deviate below it.

The following sequence of event may have then been extremely hurried as the handling pilot attempted to effect best glide performance and the copilot began attempting to start the APU and / or deploy the RAT (if it was indeed deployed).

In such circumstances of massive workload in a short space of time, even mayday calls and brace commands are pushed to the back of the list; flying comes first. In the event, it could well be that they ran out of both time and altitude.

It really will be fascinating to see which speculated version of events best ties in with the facts when the AAIB make their report although we should remember that the in-depth formal-report is probably years away.

I’ve been on part of a BA cabain crew training course, and in ANY emergency the pilot and cabin crew give the brace command because in the event of a possible crash, even if the crew have little time to deal with it, having your passengers in the brace position on impact can be one of the single biggest reasons lives are saved and fewer injuries result.

It seems very strange that if the pilot’s knew there was a problem that they said nothing at all over the intercom. Obvously they were busy with other things and did a fantastic job of getting the aircraft down safely in such a short space with so few injuries. But it does make you wonder if it was more likely to be weather related - i.e with a sudden loss of power at the very last moment (i.e with not enough time to warn passengers) surely the aircraft would have been higher up on a normal approach path and therfore and landed further into the airport boundaries/on the runway? Whereas a sudden case of windshear at the last second would give no reaction time for the pilots at all.

I guess all will be revelaed when the AAIB publish their findings.