What is the procedure when an aircraft with an emergency can't land due to a blocked runway? This is a hypothetical scenario, but I'm interested to know if there are any regulations/guidance for what ATC should do in this situation.

The hypothetical nightmare scenario:


The runway is blocked by a crashed airliner and can't be cleared quickly.
The airliner is full of injured passengers who will take time to move.
The next aeroplane in line to land has an engine failure and is gliding to the runway (so can't go around).
You're in a hilly/built-up area so other options for landing are limited.


Clearly, you can't have one aircraft landing on top of a crashed aircraft, so what should ATC do?

Some of the options I can come up with (in roughly ascending order of how crazy they sound):


Switch him to a different runway e.g. LHR has two parallel runways (but if he's close to the airport making the sudden move across to another runway might be dangerous without power?)
Empty a taxiway (but you'd probably struggle to empty it fast enough at a busy airport?)
Point him towards a grassy bit of the airport
Allow him to land, but aim to land before or after the crashed aircraft (crash is probably at start or end of runway, so might just work)
Wish him good luck and tell him to find somewhere else to land (you know that's possibly going to result in him crashing, but at least he won't crash into the already crashed aircraft).


So is there any advice for the controller and if so what is it?



Note the source of this question was listening to a recording of the ATC when BA38 crashed at LHR. The controller asks the next aircraft to go around - it made me wonder what would happen if they had said no!
What's the procedure? The procedure is, be creative to save as many lives as possible!

Really. The procedure is to determine a course of action which will likely result in the best outcome for everyone, utilizing all resources and given all constraints. Period. It is as simple as that.

There are infinitely many scenarios, and one cannot be trained for everything. However, pilots and controllers are trained to remain calm. When we look at the accident report years later, reading the document, we can easily say "if the pilots had done that, people would have been saved...". The important thing is that the people who were responsible at the time had to remain calm enough to look at the big picture instead of focusing on a particular problem, otherwise they can easily overlook a solution.

During training, it is common to throw multiple failures / emergencies together. The purpose is not to train the trainee to react to this exact combination of failure, since that is rather unlikely. Rather, the purpose is to simulate a stressful environment, under which one has to make sound and logical decisions.