British Midland Airways Flight 092

Introduction
British Midland Airways Flight 092 (often referred to as the Kegworth Air Disaster) was a passenger flight from London to Belfast. It crashed after an engine failure, and it killed 47 of the 126 on board.

Pilots
Captain Kevin Hunt and First Officer David McClelland are in charge of the flight, and have both flown on this new aircraft before. Captain Hunt is a British Midland veteran, and has been with the airline since 1966. Both pilots were sacked after the investigation finished.

The Engine Failure
The plane had taken-off from Heathrow Airport with no issues whatsoever. That was until, whilst climbing through 28,000ft, the plane began to shake.The pilots immediately noticed this, and First Officer McClelland looked for the problem on his flight controls. He recognised that the right engine was malfunctioning, so he set the engine to idle and the rocking stopped. This was a good sign for the pilots, as this meant they had done the right thing. They then called ATC and announced their engine failure, and ATC advised to land at near-by East Midlands Airport.

Things Get Worse
Once reaching final approach of the airport, Captain Hunt asked for full power on their only working engine. After throttling up, the aircraft began to shake again, and the left engine caught fire. They put the last engine on idle, and attempted to re-ignite the right engine and failed. The pilots had now become passengers with front row seats. Ahead of them the pilots could see the runway, but blocking their path was the village of Kegworth. The pilots hoped that they would make it over the village, and by the time they were flying over it, they knew they could make it. But ahead of them was something much worse than a village. The M1. A sprawling highway of cars that if the plane crashed into, would kill many and could take the deathtoll up to 200. And the worst part is, it doesn't look like they will make it. A passenger looks out their window to see a church spire, and it is agreed by all that this isn't going to be a soft landing. The captain tells the passengers to brace for impact, and the impact arrives. The plane bounces on the M1, launching it back into the air, long enough to make it past the M1. This is followed by the plane slamming into an embankment, just half a mile from the East Midlands runway.

Why It Couldn't Fly
A duel engine failure is extremely rare, which lead crash investigators to believe something else was at play here. They retrieved the CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) & FDR (Flight Data Recorder) and hoped that they would supply answers. They heard on the CVR First Officer McClelland announcing which engine had failed, stating 'It's the left.... It's the right one'. Investigators wanted to interview the crew to ask them some questions about the decision, but the McClelland has suffered many injuries, and Captain Hunt has broken his spine. Eventually they interview McClelland and search for any components that many have fallen off the aircraft. They eventually find their answer in a small metal piece. It is identified as part of a fan blade for the left engine, which confuses investigators, as shutting down the right engine stopped the plane from vibrating, so why did it look as if the left engine failed? The answer: it did. The left engine failed a caused the vibrations, but why did they stop when they shut down the normal engine? This was because they had to turn off the auto-throttle, which for some unforeseen reason causes less power to be directed to both engines, which was enough to calm the left engine. But after they tried to throttle it up, the loose piece of fan blade was sucked into the engine, setting it on fire. The plane had become glider with two useless cylinders hanging off the wings.

Aftermath
The pilots of this flight were both sacked, and Captain Hunt was now in a wheelchair. This accident was less than a month after the crash of Pan Am Flight 103, which was also within Great Britain. A memorial garden was built in Kegworth Cemetery, and the 40 lives lost that day and 7 in hospital will never be forgotten.