Air Safety – Another near catastrophic power failure?

PRESS RELEASE

James Healy-Pratt, Partner & Head of Aviation, Stewarts Law

Stewarts Law represented over 10% of families involved in aviation accidents worldwide in 2007. They only represent the victims and their families in aviation accidents and are the leading aviation practice outside the US in this specialised area.

The British Airways flight BA038 incident which took place on Wednesday 17th January raises some serious concerns over air safety following a spate of recent incidents in which there has been a total failure of electronic systems. In yesterday's incident, it is believed that there was an unexplained and sudden shut down of the power and electronic systems during the Boeing 777's landing approach to London Heathrow.

Only 9 days earlier, a Boeing 747, Qantas flight QF2 travelling from London to Bangkok with 344 passengers on board suffered a loss of all main AC power, fifteen minutes away from Bangkok. The loss of power has been attributed to condensation, caused by on-board refrigeration units, leaking through a cracked tray intended to protect against this scenario, onto the aircraft's main electronics bay where the high-voltage electronics are stored, as confirmed by Qantas in their press release dated 11 January 2008. The subsequent shortening of the electronics systems resulted in a total loss of all instrumentation before the back-up battery recovered the systems. The back-up battery has a life of at least 30 minutes. Had the incident occurred earlier in the flight, particularly where emergency landings are not possible, the results could have been devastating.

In 2007, there were two reported incidents involving cockpit avionic systems failure involving one European and one Indian airline carrier.

On 5th May 2007, a Boeing 737-800 operated by Kenya Airways, flight number KQ507 crashed shortly after take-off in Cameroon killing all 114 onboard. Eight months on there is still no public information available about the cause of the crash. A theory persists that there may have been a total power failure.

All eyes are on the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) and their preliminary report into why BA038 came so close to catastrophe.