Fascinating Control Tower Audio with LHR Ground Radar video from the day BA38 crashed:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcGA3vRwzuE&feature=related

Listen to how calmly the Captain, Peter Burkhill, informs them of the MayDay and how authoritative he is seconds later when informing the crew to evacuate. Impressive.

Control Tower does a sterling job switching runways and managing go-arounds.

You can also see how quickly the rescue crews got to the aircraft on the visual recording.

A very lucky escape for those on board, with only one broken leg recorded.

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Is this real? The accompanied video indicates radar picture of some dots (fire engines?) closing towards the crash site. However, if that is true, then, one could see one dot (has to be a plane taking off) on the north runway about the same speed of the other dots in one minute time frame. The dot should have taken off!!.

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Good spot, but easily explained.

Aircraft, including BA38, were landing on the South Runway and taking off on the North Runway at the time of the crash; the South Runway on which BA38 crashed was closed and as inbound aircraft have priority, runways were switched instantly to ensure inbound aircraft could continue to land but now on the North Runway (apart from the two standard go-arounds which you hear in the audio).

As aircraft would have been lining up on the North Runway for take off, and would have had to vacate pretty quickly to permit landings, it seems this plane you see simply taxiied down the runway to an exit which was free; hence it moves considerably more slowly than one would expect during a take off roll.

In the last two frames you can see the plane to which you refer moving left to clear the runway for arriving traffic.

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The report on this dramatic crash is released by the Air Accident Investigation Board today. You can read this here:

www.aaib.gov.uk/publications/formal_reports/1_2010_g_ymmm.cfm

Some impressive flying by Peter Burkhill and his first officer.

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And the Air Crash Investigation series covers this crash this evening at 9pm:

http://natgeotv.com/uk/air-crash-investigation

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They say if your going to crash in a car, make sure its a Mercedes s class.

If your going to crash in a plane, make sure its a BA pilot on the stick!

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rhamnous - that article is nearly a year out of date; by way of update, Capt Burkhill chose to take voluntary redundancy of his own choice and later last year BA rehired him, so he is once again employed by the airline.

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It's good to hear Burkhill is back with BA.

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