BA 747 hits building in Johannesburg

https://twitter.com/HarrietTolputt/status/414884728605405184/photo/1

http://avherald.com/img/baw_b744_g-bnll_johannesburg_20131222_1.jpg

Reports are that they took the wrong taxiway. Judging by how far the wing went into the building you have to wonder if they were even paying attention.

 

Someone is going to get their wrists slapped...

 

Looks like it was one of BA's oldest 747-400's
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I see they are putting in a late bid for aero fail of the year 2013

 

Man how strong are these planes!!!

Somebody though should lose their job.
Pete

 

Given the current prices of 744's, and the number that are being parked, that one will be going to the scrap yard.

Also, as they were taxing out for take-off, extremely lucky they did not have a big fuel spill. Definitely some damage in the region of the surge tank.

 

First clue would be the main bogies riding in the grass (almost). Doubtful that taxi-way is even rated for a 744 at gross.

 

It was dark... took place at night.

Probably could not see the bogies... or the building????

 

I wonder how the taxiway is holding up. I can't imagine a GA taxiway is designed to support a 747

 

I would say that you are correct, Jim. The spars, skins, and stringers are continuos from root to tip and there is no way to splice or do a sectional repair on any of it without some hellaciuosly expensive engineering and rework and it probably wouldn't work anyway. Added weight way outboard even if it is moderate can screw up the flutter and add local stiffening where flexibility is critical. I would be surprised if the wing didn't get wracked on top of everything else. A write off.

 

I did read somewhere about a very large fuel spill, fire dept took care of it pretty quick. Will see if I can find it again

 

If it's a write off, how would they physically remove the plane from the airfield?

 

This is Joburg...leave it unlocked for 20 minutes and it's gone

 

Pretty lucky that there were no serious injuries or worse in the building.

 

Anything worth removing can be taken off right there on the airfield and shipped elsewhere, e.g. engines, doors, control surfaces, LRU's, etc. Even structural items such as door surround structure can just be cut out using a 'circular' saw or sawsall. The rest is just scrap metal. Like most machines the sum of the parts is much greater than the whole.

 

Planes get cut up and hauled off pretty regularly though occasionally thu just sit for a while first if there is space.

The DHL plane (757?) that took a missile at Baghdad International maybe 10 years ago basically is still sitting at the field last I saw. They took the engines off and probably stripped the avionics but then basically just parked out out of the way. There are a ton of old Iraq Airlines planes just sitting there in a jumble where they all got pushed together.

There was a 717 in San Antonio that was just sitting there for years with no engines.

In the last couple years there have been several C-130s cut up and trucked of from Little Rock. They were structurally damaged after being hit by a tornado a couple years ago. They pulled the engines, dismantled the control surfaces and then basically cut them up in manageable chunks.

My guess is that they will paint over the airline insignia and pull all the valuable stuff like engines and electronics. Then they will just park it maybe cut it up depending on how much space there is.

 

Didn't the B17 often made it home worse than that?!

Best

Matthias