Kegworth Air Disaster of 8th January 1989

Introduction:

The Kegworth Air Disaster occurred on the 8th of January 1989 when a British Midland Flight 92, a Boeing 737-400, crashed into the embankment of the M1 motorway near Kegworth, Leicestershire. The aircraft was attempting to conduct an emergency landing at East Midlands Airport. Of the 126 people onboard, 47 died and 74, including seven members of the flight crew, sustained serious injuries.

The disaster was due to numerous causes, but however, before one delves into the causes, one need to get the background story first.
The aircraft was on a scheduled flight from London Heathrow Airport to Belfast in Northern Ireland (Pendleton, date unknown).
After taking off from Heathrow at 7.52pm, Flight 092 was climbing through 28,300 feet to reach its nominal cruising altitude of 35,000 feet when one of the fan blades on the left engine suddenly ruptured (Pendleton, date unknown. While the pilots did not know the source of the problem, a pounding noise was suddenly heard, accompanied by severe vibrations. In addition, smoke poured into the cabin through the ventilation system and a smell of burning smoke entered the plane. Numerous passengers sitting near the rear of the plane reported smoke and sparks coming from the left engine.
The flight was therefore diverted to nearby East Midlands Airport. After the engine failure, the Captain then shut down the engine to prevent fuel from being pumped into it, which would be terminal. Smoke was no longer coming through the ventilation, which made the crew think they had dealt with the problem. However, that was far from the truth. The gliding aircraft narrowly missed the village of Kegworth and landed on the M1. A stones throw from the East Midlands Airport runway.

To explain the consequence of why the plane crashed, one needs to delve into the incident in more detail. It was due to two main factors, firstly the case of shutting down the wrong engine.