Why Did British Airways Flight 38 Crash?

All the heroics of the flight crew aside, the real question is why did the British Airways Boeing 777 lose power to both of its engines with less than 2 minutes before landing at Heathrow Airport outside London?

Investigators have little to go on at this point.

Theories about the cause of the crash include mechanical or electronic failure, or water somehow contaminating the fuel. Aviation sources at Manchester Airport said a BA ground engineer told them: "We've been told to carry out checks to make sure that any water in our fleet's fuel tanks is removed. Water contamination is a constant and common problem in fuel."

Air accident investigators said yesterday that the plane had been on autopilot and autothrottle at 600ft, over West Hounslow, and in its landing approach after a normal and uneventful flight. At that point, the autothrottle had demanded an "increase in thrust", meaning more power, from the engines but they failed to respond.

With time running out, the flight crew then tried to move the throttle levers manually and the engines again failed to respond.

By then, the plane was seconds from the ground with Mr Coward at the controls and so sudden and dramatic was the failure that the crew did not have time to sound a warning. It would have taken less than 40 seconds for the plane to travel the last two miles.

It's a mysterious crash that has ramifications for the rest of the industry if the plane lost power for some reason other than water contamination in the fuel systems.