The Boeing 737-800 aircraft was taking off from Bristol on a flight to Las Palmas in Gran Canaria on 4 March with six crew and 163 passengers onboard when neither of the two pilots noticed that the thrust had been “set incorrectly” for takeoff.
This meant the aircraft was only 10 feet off the ground when it cleared the runway and just 100 feet above the A38 road, which runs next to the airport’s boundary.
The AAIB’s report said that the aircraft’s autothrottle had disengaged due to a fault at the start of the takeoff procedure and the thrust set manually by the crew was “less than the required takeoff thrust”.
“It is well known that humans are poor at detecting acceleration rates and recognising that their takeoff run is not matching the calculated performance,” said the AAIB. “Performance issues can be insidious and invisible to the crew until very late in the takeoff roll.”
The flight to Las Palmas was being used as a “training sector” for a new captain with a training captain acting as aircraft “commander” in the cockpit.
The AAIB added “both pilots had noted how close to the end of the runway they were” as the aircraft took off.
The pilots decided to continue the flight despite this issue, which later landed in Las Palmas without any problems or damage. The AAIB said it would publish a full report into the incident in “due course”.
