Mistake by 'tired technicians' led to British Airways engine fire

A British Airways plane was forced to make an emergency landing at Heathrow airport after one of its engines caught fire because of mistake made by tired workers, an investigation has revealed.

The Airbus A319 aircraft was carrying 75 passengers and five crew members from London to Oslo on May 24, 2013 when the covers of the engines flew off and fuel from a punctured pipe caused a fire in the engine.

Four minutes into the flight, the pilot was forced to return to Heathrow and land with just one engine, scattering the runway with debris. Once the plane was on the ground, the fire was put out and passengers were evacuated from the plane via escape slides, with just three reported injuries.

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More than two years later, an Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) report has concluded that several human errors led up to the accident.

The doors on both engines had been left unlatched during scheduled maintenance by two technicians who planned to come back later in their shift to top up the oil. Instead, they mistakenly resumed working on another plane.

The pilot and ground handler also failed to spot the unlatched doors during their pre-flight inspection.

The technicians involved may have been "compromised by fatigue" due to a "significant level" of overtime they has been working, investigators said.

One of the technicians had worked 70 hours over seven consecutive days and nights and was on the second of two 12-hour overtime nightshifts, The Guardian reports.

The report also found that cabin crew failed to act after a number of terrified passengers informed them about they could see fuel streaming from the engine.

"It is evident from photographs and passenger reports that the fuel leak was clearly visible through the cabin windows," the report said. "Despite these cues, information regarding the fuel leak was not assimilated by the cabin crew and not passed to the flight crew as required."

A number of recommendations have been made to prevent such an accident from happening again, including fatigue risk management, in-flight damage assessments by cabin crew and aircraft evacuation procedures.

BA's executive chairman Keith Williams told the BBC: "The safety of our customers and crew is always our highest priority. "The changes we have already made to our procedures, along with the safety recommendations for EASA and Airbus, will prevent occurrences of this type of incident in the future."