The first officer of the British Airways aircraft that crash-landed at Heathrow was revealed yesterday to be the real hero of the drama as details emerged of his desperate struggle to avoid landing on homes near the airport perimeter.

John Coward, 41, was in control of flight BA038 on the final approach. The Boeing 777 was at 600ft, less than 40 seconds from touchdown, when he noticed that the aircraft’s speed was dropping below the level he had set. He asked the captain, Peter Burkill, to apply more thrust by pushing forward the two levers between the pilots.

But the engines failed to respond and, within seconds, Mr Coward felt his control stick begin to shake, a warning signal that the aircraft was about to stall.

He pushed the nose down to gain speed but, in doing so, lost valuable height. He glided the aircraft for as long as possible, making it over the perimeter road and airport fence before dropping on to the grass more than 300 yards from the start of the runway. The pilots had no time to tell passengers to brace themselves, and did not manage to radio a mayday until the moment that they hit the grass.

A senior BA pilot said last night that Mr Burkill could have taken the controls from Mr Coward but had wisely decided against doing so because the transfer could have cost them a couple of seconds, enough for the incident to have ended in disaster.

In an initial report released last night, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said that the engines had failed to respond to a command for more thrust from the autothrottle and also failed to respond when the captain operated the manual throttle.

“The aircraft then descended rapidly and struck the ground, some 1,000ft short of the paved runway surface, just inside the airfield boundary fence.”

The report said that one passenger broke a leg during the evacuation. The AAIB successfully downloaded the aircraft’s flight data recorder and voice recorder at its base in Farnborough, Hampshire.

The cause of the crash may not emerge until the AAIB’s preliminary report is published in 30 days, or until the final report several months later.

In their debriefing the pilots said that they had received no warning that they were losing power until they had noticed their speed dropping. The crash investigators are likely to consider the role played by a device in the cockpit that prevents some warning signals from sounding below 600ft in order not to distract the pilots while they concentrate on landing.

The BA pilot said: “Warnings of engine problems were inhibited, which could have prevented the crew from taking action earlier to recover power. This will be an issue for the investigators and Boeing to consider. They have to balance the conflicting needs of giving early warning and not distracting the pilots at such a critical phase of the flight.”

Mr Burkill said: “I am proud to say that every member of the team played their part expertly yesterday, displaying the highest standards of skill and professionalism. No one more so than my senior first officer, John Coward, who was the handling pilot in the final stages of the flight.”

Boeing and Rolls-Royce, the engine manufacturer, have sent teams to help the AAIB investigation. If it is confirmed that both engines failed, it would be the first time that this has happened on a Boeing 777. The engines are designed to operate independently. One indication that both had failed was that the air intake for the aircraft’s back-up power unit, located in the tail, was seen to be open after the landing. British Airways last night refused to comment on reports that it had ordered engineers to check the fuel tanks of its entire fleet for possible water contamination.

The BA pilot said that the absence of any serious injuries among the 136 passengers and 16 crew, which included a third pilot in the cockpit, could have been due to the extra safety training the airline gives its flight crews.

An AAIB spokesman said that the aircraft might not be moved from the end of the southern runway for days. “They’ll move it as soon as they can, but they’ll want to look underneath first,” he said.

The British Air Line Pilots’ Association (Balpa) said that Mr Burkill and the pilots were “ordinary people who did an extraordinary thing”. Balpa said that after being interviewed by the AAIB, the two pilots had relaxed over “a quiet curry”. It added that the men had no wish to be perceived as heroes and considered the story’s front-page status “embarrassing”.

BA said that the cockpit crew and the entire staff on the aircraft would be allowed as much time off as needed.

Mr Burkill paid tribute to the cabin service director, Sharron EatonMercer: “It was typical of her selflessness that she took time to check that we on the flight deck were all right before going down the chute herself. I want to thank the passengers for their calmness and good sense under extremely unfamiliar circumstances. I wish those who suffered injuries a speedy and complete recovery.”

Mr Coward’s mother told reporters she was proud of her son. “I would put my life in his hands,” she said.

On the flight deck

— John Coward was the 41-year-old senior first officer who landed the BA 777 jet safely at Heathrow on Thursday, despite a probable catastrophic power failure

— Mr Coward joined British Airways in 1993 on its 737 fleet at Manchester. He moved on to the 777 craft in 1997

— Mr Coward, who had always dreamt of being a pilot, joined BA when he was 22 after studying mechanical engineering at Imperial College, London

— Along with the captain Peter Birkill, he and Sharron Eaton-Mercer, cabin services director, were greeted with applause when they gave their first short statement about the crash

— Mr Birkill, 43, has been flying BA planes for almost 20 years. He lives in Worcester with his wife, Lynn, a former air hostess, and their three children. Their two-year-old son, Troy, has already clocked up 25,000 air miles

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