Tui flight took off from Bristol airport with ‘insufficient thrust’

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.”