A Hero Named Coward

From the Department of Irony, the hero of the British Airways Boeing 777 crash landing in London was the co-pilot named John Coward:

Both engines on the British Airways jet which crash-landed at Heathrow failed to respond to both automatic and manual demands for more thrust two miles short of the airport, investigators have said.

Everyone got out in 90 secondsThe announcement came after the captain of the Boeing 777, Peter Burkill, praised his co-pilot, cabin staff, their passengers and rescue teams for playing crucial parts in averting a tragedy.

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch, in its preliminary report on Thursday's near-disaster, said "the Autothrottle demanded an increase in thrust from the two engines but the engines did not respond."

The report adds that despite further demands for increased thrust from the autothrottle - and the flight crew moving the throttle levers - the engines did not respond.

Capt Burkill, 43, paid his tribute from a written statement at a news conference after being greeted by sustained applause from colleagues.

"Flying is about teamwork and we had an outstanding team on board. As captain of the aircraft I am glad to say that every member of my team played their part expertly," he said.

He added: "No one more so than my senior first officer, John Coward, the handling pilot on the final approach. He did the most remarkable job.

When I heard the plane had landed short of the runway my original assumption was some sort of wind shear. There was a deadly accident like that in Dallas back in 1985 when a DC-10 was caught in a low level shear that sent it into the ground short of the DFW runway.

This time the culprit turned out to be a power failure from an unknown source. It could be fuel contamination that caused the loss of power, or some type of computer screw-up such as what happened in the crash of an early Airbus airliner during a demonstration flight some years ago. On these sophisticated aircraft the pilots don't do a lot of actual flying anymore. Even with the plane only 2 miles from touchdown it was flying on autopilot...until the power failed and the co-pilot (who was in charge of that leg of the flight) took over and manually stretched the glide as far as he could. I read in one report that it took a sudden application of increased flaps to cause the plane to balloon a little bit and clear some trees near the end of the runway. Nice work, Mr. Coward.

I'm sure Boeing and the airline are more than a little nervous and won't feel much better until they can identify the exact problem.