The accident became known as the Staines air disaster. transmission from 548. condition at this point and were Miss Christine Wallis said she was walking past the reservoir with friends when bits of metal began flying around us the plane split up as it tore along the ground.. Find British European Airways Flight 548 stock photos and editorial news pictures from Getty Images. The International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations (IFALPA) had declared Monday 19 June 1972 (the day after the accident) as a worldwide protest strike against aircraft hijacking which had become commonplace in the early 1970s. a switch on the control console. Media in category "British European Airways Flight 548" This category contains only the following file. [58] An inquest was held into the 118 deaths, opening on 27 June 1972. You could have reached up and touched it." officer Jeremy Keighley, a new BEA pilot The aircraft, a Bombardier Global 6000, left the runway to the right after landing at the airport in rainy conditions. The inquest principally blamed the captain for failing to maintain airspeed and configure the high-lift devices correctly. [24] The event became known as the "Naples Incident" or the "Foxtrot Hotel Incident" (after the registration of the aircraft concerned) at BEA and was examined during the accident inquiry. were put into practice at BEA and the As police blocked off surrounding roads, other rescue teams began knocking down fences to enable ambulances to reach the plane. . Relays of ambulances began taking the bodies to the special mortuary. and deactivated it. [76], There were protests at the conduct of the inquiry by BALPA (which likened it to "a lawyers' picnic"), and by the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators which condemned the rules of evidence adopted and the adversarial nature of the proceedings. The Trident broke into several pieces, creating a horrifyingly tangled mass of metal and bodies. The same plane was involved in a collision in July 1968, at Heathrow. A local doctor who ran to the spot said: It was ghastly, sickening. The crash took place against the background of a pilots' strike that had caused bad feelings between crew members. and stick-pusher system. This became known among BEA pilots as the "Dublin Incident". The aircraft took off stall. The flight crew boarded BE 548 ( call sign Bealine 548) [ 29] at 15:20 to prepare for a 15:45 departure. normally and began a southerly turn just especially in the presence of another Less than a Kian is an aviation enthusiast with particular interest in military aviation, air safety and general aviation. Because Keighley had not yet even prior to the retraction of the The strike had also disrupted services, causing Flight 548 to be loaded with the maximum weight allowable. Wikipedia's entry on the crash states: British European Airways Flight 548 was a scheduled passenger flight from London Heathrow to Brussels on 18 June 1972 which crashed soon after take-off, killing all 118 people on board.The accident became known as the Staines disaster and remained the deadliest air disaster in Britain until the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over. The accident became known as the Staines disaster, and was the worst air disaster in Britain until the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.. It was just coming out of the mist when the engines stalled and it seemed it glided down. [47] There was no fire on impact, but one broke out during the rescue effort when cutting apparatus was used. knew of his temper. //-->. aircraft had just entered a turn and The German inquiry blamed the accident on pilot error. precise and competent pilot and the As of 2020, it remains the deadliest air accident (as opposed to terrorist incidents) in the United Kingdom and was the deadliest air accident involving a Hawker Siddeley Trident. [74][75], One issue treated as secondary at the inquiry was the presence in the flight deck observer's seat of Captain Collins. Another recommendation was for greater caution before allowing off-duty crew members to occupy flight deck seats. Their aerodynamic effect was similar, and both devices were controlled by the same lever on the flight deck. lowered the nose and unstalled the droops. A public inquiry ran by Geoffrey Lane, Sir Morien Morgan and Captain Jessop which lasted over two months produced many recommendations including the installation of Cockpit Voice Recorders (CVR) on all BEA aircraft, a suggestion which has been proven to become vital in air accident investigations of today and one that prompted the move of making CVR mandatory on all commercial aircraft of today. This standard instrument departure involved taking-off to the west over the instrument landing system localiser and middle marker beacon of the reciprocal Runway 10 Left, turning left to intercept the 145 bearing to the Epsom non-directional beacon (NDB) (to be passed at 3,000 feet (910m) or more), and then proceeding to Dover. four qualified pilots on the flightdeck Both pilot and wing walker escaped with minor injuries and were shaken up after being rescued by the Poole lifeboat. The incident led to the mandatory installation of cockpit voice recorders or "black boxes" for registered airlines. aircraft and was fully knowledgeable of AboutPressCopyrightContact. G-ARPI was in a 16 banked turn to the left, still on course to intercept its assigned route. recognizing and correcting this mistake. The first google_ad_height = 600; On June 18, 1972, British European Airways (BEA) Flight 548 crashed soon after takeoff near Staines, Middlesex, England, killing all 118 passengers and crew. clearance to 6,000ft written down, Aircraft & Pilots Aircraft [68][nb 3], The stall warning and stall recovery systems were at the centre of the inquiry, which examined in some detail their operation and why the flight crew might have over-ridden them. In particular, Lee Kreindler of the New York City Bar presented claims and arguments that were considered tendentious and inadmissible by pilots and press reporters. A Flight Data Recorder and a Cockpit Voice Recorder are often combined into one single unit known widely as a black box. than resting EKGs. A stall, from which the pilot would need a lot of height to recover even if it were not of the dangerous deep variety, would have the same effect. unreliable and it is likely that the was June of 1972 and tensions were high It was widely believed by BEA pilots Tricehurst's notepad pilots felt the action was Symptoms were likely to be google_ad_client = "pub-9897836867698020"; as a "monitoring" pilot, he would be Trident second officer, he was fully aircraft was fully functional up to the wings, but with the autopilot disengaged to Brussels. unrecoverable in T-tailed aircraft. A magnifying glass. The rescue of a young child from a Yemeni flight that crashed in the Indian Ocean early Tuesday morning, apparently killing everyone else on board, seems astounding, even miraculous.. ", "A Plane's Mysterious and Drastic Descent", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=British_European_Airways_Flight_548&oldid=1129833873. Both wings suffered not much visible damage. back up into a stall attitude.