Flightradar24 is reporting a 787 fire at LHR, no other news as of yet.

From the looks from Twitter, it doesn’t actually look like the aircraft is on one of the runways. But because it’s using the fire service the airport can now no longer take arrivals or departures.
https://twitter.com/apd1988/status/355719615151759360/photo/1

The BBC has the findings from the NTSB investigation so far.
Apparently the inspecting captain (who was in the left seat during the landing) noticed the aircraft was too low at about 500 feet, as the aircraft was cleared to land (34 seconds prior to impact). He told the training pilot, the PIC in the right seat, to pull back.
However the captain then noticed the auto throttles were not maintaining the approach speed and at 8 seconds prior to impact manually initiated full power.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23249012

I’m sure the solution was a mandatory fix imposed by Boeing and Rolls Royce, but either way even if the problem wasn’t fixed… I have a friend in the San Francisco area who I was speaking to earlier this week, temperatures were 113+ degrees this week. So I doubt it was an icing issue ;). The whole of the US has been in the grips of a major heat wave.

I’m no pilot, but I do recall reading something about ETOPS. Perhaps someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t it state that before an aircraft can fly any commercial route between two airports it must be able to fly on one engine between any two airports along the flight plan in the cruise. So if you’re in a 777 and one of the engines is cut half way across the Atlantic, it can still fly all the way to Gander.

EDIT: “There are different levels of ETOPS certification, each allowing aircraft to fly on routes that are a certain amount of flying time away from the nearest suitable airport. For example, if an aircraft is certified for 180 minutes, it is permitted to fly any route, as long as it is always within 180 minutes flying time to the nearest suitable airport. ETOPS operation has no direct correlation to water or distance over water. It refers to single-engine flight times between diversion airfields, regardless as to whether such fields are separated by water or land.”
Source; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS

I have to say looking at the BBC news report this doesn’t look too much like a bird strike. Potentially an uncontained engine failure?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-22652718

I just read an interesting rumour on another forum. Apparently the left hand engine was shut down shortly after take off due to a mechanical fault. As the crew were preparing to land, the right hand engine hit a bird and caught fire. If this is true it would explain why the crew perhaps didn’t shut down the flaming engine, as it was the only one still running; a close call to all involved and another exemplary performance from a BA crew at LHR.

I hate both 😀 there’s something about both aircraft that looks out of place (but I can’t put my finger on it), it’s like if you ask a 4 year old to draw an aeroplane… This is what they’d draw.

I think Flybe is one of those companies who grew too far and too fast, particularly in the low yielding leisure market. It was great during the boom years, but come recession and suddenly who wants to fly from Southampton to La Rochelle (especially at the prices they charge)?

It doesn’t come as much of a surprise they’re now cutting Gatwick, you can’t justify operating small regional aircraft at an airport where the costs to operate are so high.

The report claims that more passengers could fly into LHR if larger planes were used. But here’s your first problem. Heathrow is a hub airport, meaning (as I’m sure we all here are aware) there are a fair few transit passengers. If we bung them all in larger aircraft you’re ultimately going to use fewer slots in the process. Whilst on the face of it this may seem like a positive, what you must realise is that you’re reducing flight frequency. So any transit passengers are more likely to go for those large hubs around Europe with the smaller transfer times and the wide-range of frequencies using smaller aircraft.

In an ideal world I’d like to see at least 2 new runways at LHR and 1 more at LGW… I mean, put it this way, if your a foreign airline executive and want to enter the European market.
Do you invest in the airport that’s building the new capacity now like FRA, CDG or AMS? Or do you invest in the old airport from the 1970’s with no growth plans on the table? The uncertainty over UK airport capacity is undoubtedly costing us valuable trade links. You only have to look at the breadth of airlines that fly into some of these European hubs and it does make you wonder why they choose them over us? On paper we have a lot more in common with some of these countries than say France or The Netherlands do.