The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner jet was 600 meters away from a potentially catastrophic incident at the London airport.
It was speeding along the runway at 155mph when it finally took off just meters short of the end of the tarmac.
But its pilots later blamed “bad signage” after it emerged the plane started taking off half a kilometer past the starting point.
The Air Accident Investigation Branch said in its report that any attempt to abort the take-off could have triggered a potentially catastrophic “overrun”.
It added that the plane was 12 tonnes too heavy to take off from the point at which the aircraft began to fly.
A newly-published report into the incident, which happened in March, revealed: “After departure, both pilots commented that there was not much runway remaining at lift-off.”
The report added: “The crew did not identify the beginning of the runway and taxied forward to the landing threshold before beginning their take-off.
“This decreased the take-off distance available and meant that the aircraft did not meet regulated performance requirements for its actual take-off weight.
“The distance available for the take-off would have been insufficient had an aircraft engine failed and had the crew decided to stop.”
The report also revealed four other flights failed to start at the right spot on the airport's standby runway - known as 26R - between September 2017 and March this year.
The airport has since agreed to increase awareness of the beginning of the runway, especially at night.
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Source: Daily Star UK
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