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Searching for Risk and Resilience

In: Close Calls

Author

Listed:
  • Carl Macrae

Abstract

“Close Call”. The term is redolent of the lucky escape, the close brush with disaster, the narrowly avoided catastrophe. Close calls don’t come much closer than on the morning of 21st November 1989, at London’s Heathrow airport. Flying blind in thick cloud and fog, relying on instruments and struggling with bouts of food poisoning and the notoriously tricky old ‘Sperry’-type autopilot, the crew of a Boeing 747 began their final approach. Breaking through heavy cloud just seconds before touch down, they made the gut-wrenching realisation they had drifted way off the runway centre-line, out over the airport’s perimeter fence. Punching the engines to full go-around power to abort the landing, the aircraft lumbered away, clearing the luxury Penta Hotel with little more than twelve feet (3.65 metres) to spare, sending staff and guests screaming into the street. Near-misses don’t come much closer. Nothing but providence and a few feet separated hundreds of people from an horrific catastrophe.

Suggested Citation

  • Carl Macrae, 2014. "Searching for Risk and Resilience," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Close Calls, chapter 1, pages 1-24, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-37612-1_1
    DOI: 10.1057/9781137376121_1
    as

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