Industry fears over the safety of Boeing’s 777 jet arose from two serious incidents involving the aircraft’s engines in a single year.

The first occurred at Heathrow in January last year, when a British Airways flight from Beijing crash-landed 1,000ft (305m) short of the runway. As the Boeing 777-200ER jet came in to land at Heathrow on January 17, 2008, the Rolls-Royce engines failed to respond to automatic and manual commands from the crew for more thrust.

The pilots John Coward and Captain Peter Burkill averted disaster by changing the angles of the wing flaps to reduce drag and push the nose of the jet towards the ground.

The plane passed just 20ft above cars on the A30 and skidded close to a car that had just dropped off Gordon Brown.

The aircraft was badly damaged by the crash as the nose gear collapsed. The landing gear on the right side of the plane detached and smashed through the fuel tank and cabin.

One passenger sustained serious injuries and four crew and eight passengers received minor injuries, but there were no fatalities among the 152 people on board.

A report into the crash found that the likely cause was a build-up of ice in the fuel delivery system, restricting the flow into the engines and causing double “engine rollback”, where an engine decelerates uncommanded.

Because temperatures during the flight had not fallen below the 777’s operating parameters, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) recommended that measures be taken by Boeing and Rolls-Royce to prevent the water usually present in aircraft fuel from freezing and blocking the fuel delivery system. The AAIB is still investigating the crash.

The crash was the first time that a Boeing 777 had been written off in its 12-year operating history, and investigators praised the crew for their quick thinking. As a result of the incident, Boeing began developing procedures to help to prevent ice accumulation and to recover thrust when ice blockages occur.

There was a second incident of engine rollback in a Boeing 777, however, when Delta Flight 18 from Shanghai to Atlanta in the US experienced an uncommanded loss of thrust in its right-hand Rolls-Royce engine.

As the plane flew in the cruise phase at 39,000ft over Great Falls in Montana on November 26 last year, it experienced a loss of power in one engine.

The crew, following Boeing’s procedures to regain engine performance, descended to 31,000ft, at which point the engines recovered and began to respond normally. The flight was able to continue to Atlanta Hartsfield airport with no injuries to the 15 crew and 232 passengers.

Both incidents involved Boeing 777-200ER jets powered by Rolls-Royce RB211 Trent 800 Series engines and both flights had been flying from Chinese airports – similarities noted by both the British and American investigators.

In both cases, the loss of thrust in the engines was caused by a suspected build-up of ice on the fuel/oil heat exchanger (FOHE) in the Rolls-Royce engines, leading the National Transportation Safety Board in the US to ask Rolls-Royce to redesign the component.

Last month, Rolls-Royce said that it was in the process of redesigning the exchanger and that it would be ready for installation within 12 months.

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