Planning for Recovery

British Airways Airbus A320-232 G-EUUI crew at Gardermoen Airport Oslo, Norway had a moving violation conflict with a de-icer truck on 13 Feb 07 - while being de-iced. Picture's at this link.

The BA duty engineer had to source a new engine, a spare stand, and all the tools etc to be sent out. BA ended up chartering an AN12 from Stansted (UR-LMI) and it took most of the night to get everything arranged. Then when the Antonov turned up, the onboard winch only had a two tonne capacity and the engine weighed five, so it took them about two hours to load up. Such extemporizations are never easy.

Apparently the leader of the de-ice team had signaled to the flight deck that they were clear to taxi on, so they did. The aircraft hadn’t finished doing the moving and was positioning onto the de-icing stand under the guidance of the Nordic Air de-icing coordinator when the crunch happened. It caused quite significant damage. In these circumstances you normally end up looking for who is at fault, and both sides will be saying "each other".

Fortunately, for BA, sources say the cockpit voice recorder (which is now back in London) recorded the de-icing coordinator (either after entering the cockpit or by radio) clearly admitting that he had made a mistake and accepting responsibility for this unfortunate incident. That always makes the insurance assessors deliriously happy.