The aircraft, which suffered moderate damage to a section of its forward fuselage as of a result of the vigorous fire, was repaired and returned to commercial passenger service in March 2016.[1][2][3] The fire was caused by metal fatigue in a compressor disk, leading to detachment of the main fuel supply line.
Incident
Fire damage to the left-side fuselage
The aircraft left Terminal 3, Gate E3, at 15:53 local time, and began its take-off from Runway 07L at 16:12 where the incident occurred.[4]
After noticing what the pilot later described as a "catastrophic failure of the engine"[5] well before take-off speed, the flight crew aborted the take-off by using the aircraft's brakes and ordered an evacuation of the aircraft.[6] All 170 passengers and crew escaped. Nineteen people sustained minor injuries and one person sustained serious injuries.[7] The aircraft is thought to have reached a speed of approximately 90 miles per hour (78 kn; 140 km/h) when the decision to abort was made;[8] far below the takeoff decision speed of the aircraft, which would have been at least 139 miles per hour (121 kn; 224 km/h).[9]
The airport's emergency services extinguished the fire within five minutes of the mayday call. Fourteen people were lightly injured, mostly from sliding down the escape chutes, and treated at Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center.[5][10] The fire caused a large hole in the cargo hold and damage to the engine.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) indicated the fire was caused by failure of the left General Electric GE90 engine, one of two fitted on the aircraft.[11] The aircraft came to a halt upwind, causing the fire to be blown towards the fuselage; the aircraft sustained localised, but major, structural damage as a result.[12][13] The aircraft was equipped with suppression systems, though the systems did not extinguish the fire.[10]
The runway, one of four, was closed, and several inbound flights were cancelled.[14]
Aircraft and crew
The aircraft at Victorville in February 2016, showing the unpainted fuselage skin and engine cowling
The aircraft involved in the incident was a Boeing 777-236ER[a], s/n 29320, registered as G-VIIO. At the time of the incident, the aircraft was 16 years old; it had been delivered new to British Airways on 26 January 1999.[15]
The captain was 63-year-old Chris Henkey, who had been with British Airways since 1973 and received his type rating on the Boeing 777 in 1999. He had 30,000 flight hours, including 12,000 hours on the Boeing 777.[7]: 9–10 Flight 2276 was intended to be his penultimate flight before his retirement (which was intended to occur in a week),[16] but following the accident he decided that Flight 2276 would be his final flight.[17][18]
The first officer, 30-year-old Ian Callaghan, joined the airline in 2006, receiving his type rating on the Boeing 777 in 2011, and had 6,400 flight hours, with 3,100 hours on the Boeing 777.[7]: 9 45-year-old relief pilot Kevin Hillyer was also on board. He had been with British Airways since 1997 and had been type rated on the Boeing 777 since 2001. The relief pilot had 14,000 flight hours, and like captain Henkey, was also well experienced on the Boeing 777 having logged 10,000 hours on it. He was a first officer at the time of the accident.[7]: 10–11
Repair
In December 2015, British Airways announced that a team of engineers from Boeing had assessed the aircraft and determined the damage was limited and suitable for repair. As a result, it was announced that the aircraft would be repaired and returned to service.[19] A team from Boeing completed the repairs in February 2016.
Airworthiness tests were conducted on the aircraft on 25 February 2016. On 26 February, the aircraft made its departure from Las Vegas McCarran airport at 1:33 p.m. and was flown to Victorville, arriving at 3:06 p.m, where it was repainted and further repairs and maintenance work was performed.[20][21] The aircraft was then flown to British Airways Maintenance Cardiff in Cardiff on 15 March for a routine C check. Finally, it returned to its London Gatwick base and resumed passenger service on 24 March.[22]
Investigation
The failed compressor segment
Uncontained failure of the left-side engine
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the American air accident investigative body, dispatched four investigators to the site the day after the incident.[23] As well as FAA, Boeing and General Electric involvement, the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch had a representative and that representative appointed "British Airways and the UK Civil Aviation Authority as technical advisors". Initial NTSB findings were that an uncontained engine failure had occurred and that the "left engine and pylon, left fuselage structure and inboard left wing airplane were substantially damaged by the fire".[24] On 6 October 2015, the NTSB issued an update stating that the accident was traced to the failure of the "stage 8–10 spool in the high-pressure compressor section...liberating fragments that breached the engine case and cowling".[25]
The NTSB released their final report 2 years and 10 months later. The cause of the accident was determined as:
The failure of the left engine high-pressure compressor (HPC) stage 8-10 spool, which caused the main fuel supply line to become detached from the engine main fuel pump and release fuel, resulting in a fire on the left side of the airplane. The HPC stage 8-10 spool failed due to a sustained-peak low-cycle fatigue crack that initiated in the web of the stage 8 disk; the cause of the crack initiation could not be identified by physical inspection and stress and lifing analysis. Contributing to this accident was the lack of inspection procedures for the stage 8 disk web.[7]
— Final report, National Transportation Safety Board
^The aircraft was a Boeing 777-200 model; Boeing assigns a unique code for each company that buys one of its aircraft, which is applied as a suffix to the model number at the time the aircraft is built, hence "777-236" designates a 777-200 built for British Airways (customer code 36).
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