THE pilot of the British Airways aircraft that crash-landed at Heathrow said he feared the flight would end in “catastrophe” as he struggled to cope with a double engine failure just two miles from touchdown.

First Officer John Coward, 41, said both engines lost power simultaneously, leaving him with just seconds to bring the aircraft down. He managed to clear the perimeter fence before landing short of the runway with “not just one thud but a series of thuds”.

Investigators examining the wreckage of flight BA038 are now focusing on the theory that the crash was caused by a failure in the avionics and electronics systems that control the plane’s engines. British Airways is expected to examine the systems of every aircraft in its 43-strong fleet of Boeing 777s, although the Air Accidents Investigations Branch says there is no need to ground the planes at this stage.

A senior industry source said: “BA are going to have to check every single one of their 777s. The AAIB has identified that the problem seems to be connected with the avionics and and electrics which link the flight deck to the engines. They will need to go through engineering logs to find if there have been any similar problems, they will need to make sure all the connections are OK. It is good practise as much as anything else.”

A former 777 pilot said that it was extremely unlikely that both engines would have suffered failure at the same time. “For two engines to fail at that stage of the flight - it’s not lack of fuel or contamination,” he said. “It’s got to have been commanded (by the automatic control systems). We are all aghast.”

Aviation experts will also compare the crash to an incident in August 2005 when a Malaysia Airlines 777 suffered an electronics failure. The plane had just taken off from Perth, Western Australia, en route to Kuala Lumpar when the computer system claimed that the plane was going both so slowly it was about to stall, and so fast it was approaching its overspeed limit. British Airways said it had carried out an emergency directive to correct the “software” fault.

Coward was in control of flight BAA038 as it made its 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. Coward was forced to push the nose down to gain speed but, in doing so, lost valuable height.

Coward, who lives in France with his wife, told Sky News: “The adrenaline kicked in when I realised I had to land the plane with absolutely no power at all. There are drills for a power failure at 30,000 feet when you have time to reset and start the engines, but there are no drills for this. As I was approaching the runway I thought that this was going to be a catastrophic crash.”

The aircraft landed short of the paved runway surface. Coward said: “I expected an almighty great crash, but instead it bounced along the ground. I tried my best to keep it straight and stop it spinning off. When eventually it did stop there was a strange eerie silence. There were no engines, no sound in the cockpit. At this point I heard a lot of commotion from behind where they were starting to evacuate the aircraft. At this point my mind went blank. My job was done.”

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