There have been lots of interesting points bought up in this thread. No doubt the crew made the decision to continue based on advice received from many different departments. If the engine had simply flamed out then this is not an emergency. If the engine had sustained serious damage then it probably is. There is not a requirement to land at the nearest airfield with 1 eng shutdown. After all the redundancy left is still similar to a 2 eng aircraft on 2 engines. Unfortunately in the US they do not recognise the PAN call. There you either have an emergency or you dont. It is a pity as the PAN call is useful in alerting ATC to the fact that you have a situation, which is not yet an emergency, but that you require a degree of urgency with regard to your flight handling (or it may turn into one). The BA crew probably did the right thing in declaring an emergency to start with until they could make a more informed assessment of the situation and then downgrade or cancel it. This would require some time to do. There are plenty of enroute airfields to divert to enroute. This seems to be a case of damned if you do and damned if you dont. Each airline should have a clear and consistant policy on go or no go. They deliberately dont do this and as a consequence leave the crew high and dry.For the record I would have dumped and returned to LA but I also respect the decision of the BA crew to continue....tough call.CheersSteve

Tough call indeed.....and your absolutely right about leaving tough decision up to the crew. Our Operating Manuals were a bit clearer in that repect since we had only twins. They'll tell you it's what you're paid for........Oh well.Xander

A more balanced view of the circumstances here.http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...19/ai_n12941248Cheers Timhttp://members.chello.nl/t.westnutt/realair.gif

Thanks for the article Tim.As the piece says "It is notable that if they'd straightaway proceeded on a climb toward the UK and consulted the home office en route, instead of circling over the Pacific Ocean west of Los Angeles for over 20 minutes, they probably would have had enough fuel to make Heathrow - and no one would have been any the wiser.""Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is making ugly noises about fining British Airways for "careless and reckless operation of an aircraft,"The FAA's preoccupation with fines would be better spent reviewing the airlines op specs regarding policy on this. Should the FAA not be fined for allowing and approving such a "careless and reckless operator" to knowingly continue to operate within US airspace? They cant have it both ways can they??????It is also interesting to note that following an engine failure/shutdown, that does not meet the continued flight provisions, you are required to land at the nearest suitable airfield in terms of time. That means if you are directly flying overhead a suitable airfield then that is the one you must land at even though there may be a better one within the normal descent distance.CheersSteve

Great article Tim. It would seem that poor inflight planning on re-route after the managed engine failure is the crew's biggest mistake.I think the American FAA was most concerned with the fact that the aircraft had just departed on a 12 hour flight when the engine failure occurred. The article points out that it's perfectly legal for the 747 to continue on three engines, but it's debatable whether or not it was good judgment to do so. This is especially true because of the eventual fuel emergency situation that would happen at Manchester. Consider: What if Manchester had very low ceiling IMC conditions and a situation occurred in which the 747 in question had to execute an unforeseen missed approach? The crew had radioed that not enough 'available' fuel was onboard for a such a contingency, and that they needed to land immediately because of this fact. Safety margins are cut thin in a scenario like this, and sometimes a few other added unanticipated/unforseen events happen at the same time, ultimately causing an accident. Also, if the crew had been concerned about making an immediate, high-weight landing, they could have landed at JFK or even Gander before coasting out over the ocean.