BMA

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Kegworth air disaster

The Kegworth air disaster occurred when a Boeing 737-400 crashed on to the embankment of the M1 motorway near Kegworth, Leicestershire, England, while attempting to make an emergency landing at East Midlands Airport on 8 January 1989.

British Midland Flight 92 was on a scheduled flight from London Heathrow to Belfast, when a fan-blade fractured in the left engine, disrupting the air-conditioning and filling the flight-deck with smoke. The pilots believed that this indicated a fault in the right engine, since earlier models of the 737 ventilated the flight-deck from the right, and they were unaware that the 400 used a different system. So they mistakenly throttled back the good engine, pumping more fuel into the malfunctioning one, which burst into flames. Of the 126 people aboard, 47 died and 74 sustained serious injuries.

The enquiry attributed the blade fracture to metal fatigue, caused by heavy vibration in the newly upgraded engines, which had only been tested in the laboratory and not under representative flight conditions.