British Airways Flight 9

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British Airways Flight 009, sometimes referred to as the Jakarta incident, was a scheduled British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Auckland, with stops in Bombay, Madras, Kuala Lumpur, Perth and Melbourne. On 24 June 1982, the route was being flown by City of Edinburgh, a 747-200 registered G-BDXH, when it flew into a cloud of dust and ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, and all four engines failed. The aircraft was able to glide far enough to exit the ash cloud, and three of the engines were restarted, allowing the flight to divert to Jakarta and perform a safe landing.

[edit] The incident

The first sign of anything amiss occurred shortly after 13:40 GMT above the Indian Ocean, south of Java, when Senior First Officer Roger Greaves and Senior Engineer Officer Barry Townley-Freeman noticed an effect on the windscreen similar to St. Elmo's Fire, as if it was being hit by tracer bullets. The phenomenon persisted after Captain Eric Moody, who had left the cockpit to use the lavatory, returned. Despite seeing nothing on the weather radar, they switched on engine anti-ice and the passenger seat belt signs as a precaution.

In the passenger cabin, smoke started gathering in the air. At first it was assumed to be cigarette smoke, but as it grew thicker, alarm spread. Those looking out windows also noticed that the engines were unusually bright, as if they each had a searchlight in them, shining forward through the fan blades.

At approximately 13:42 GMT, engine number four surged and then flamed out. The first officer and flight engineer immediately performed the engine fire drill, shutting off fuel and arming fire extinguishers as the Captain added some rudder to counter the uneven thrust. The passengers also spotted long yellow glows coming out of the remaining engines.

Less than a minute after the first engine failed, engine two surged and flamed out. Before the flight crew could begin the engine failure drills, engines one and three shut down almost simultaneously. The 747 had now become a glider. At 13:44 GMT, SFO Greaves declared an emergency, but the local air traffic control authority, Jakarta Area Control, misunderstood the message, and it was only after a Garuda Indonesia flight relayed that the message got through. Again at this time Captain Eric Moody was absent from the flight deck. The loss of power was immediately obvious to the passengers, and they reacted to it in many different ways. Some became resigned, while others wrote notes to their loved ones, such as Charles Capewell's poignant "Ma. In trouble. Plane going down. Will do best for boys. We love you. Sorry. Pa XXX" scrawled on the cover of his ticket wallet. There was, however, remarkably little panic.

On the flight deck the crew attempted to contact Jakarta for radar assistance, but could not be seen by Jakarta, despite their transponder being set to 7700, the international emergency code. Due to the high Indonesian mountains, an altitude of at least 11,500ft was required to cross the coast safely. Captain Moody decided, that, if the aircraft was unable to maintain altitude by the time they reached 12,000ft, he would turn the aircraft back out to sea and attempt to ditch. The crew began the engine restart drills, despite being well over the recommended maximum altitude of 28,000ft.

Despite the lack of time, Captain Moody made an announcement that has gone down in aviation history as a masterpiece of understatement: "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress."

At 13,500ft, the flight crew attempted one last engine restart procedure before turning for the ocean the risky prospect of a water ditching — although there were guidelines, no one had ever tried it in a 747 — nor have they since. Without warning, number four engine sparked into life, and at 13:56 GMT, Captain Moody used its power to reduce the rate of descent. Shortly thereafter, engine three restarted, followed shortly by engines one and two. The crew were amazed at their change of fortune, and requested an increase in altitude to FL150. The reason the engines could restart was due to one generator still operating, which provided power to the plane, thus allowing igniton of the engines.

As it approached its target altitude, the tracer effect on the windscreen returned without warning. Captain Moody throttled back, but it was too late, and number two engine surged again, and had to be shut down. The crew immediately descended back to FL120.

At last flight 009 approached Jakarta. Despite reports of good visibility, the crew found it hard to see anything, and had to make the approach almost entirely on instruments, despite the glideslope of the ILS being inoperative. Although the runway lights could be made out through a small strip of the windscreen, the landing lights seemed to be inoperable. After landing, the flight crew then found it impossible to taxi, as glare from apron floodlights made the windscreen opaque, and City of Edinburgh had to wait for a tug to tow her in.

[edit] The Aftermath

It was found that City of Edinburgh's problems had been caused by flying through a cloud of volcanic ash, which, because it was dry, did not show up on the weather radar, which is designed to pick up the drops of moisture that form clouds. This sandblasted the windscreen and landing light covers, as well as clogging the engines. Engines one, two and three were replaced at Jakarta, as well as the windscreen, and the fuel tanks were cleared of ash that had entered them through the pressurisation ducts, contaminating the fuel and requiring that it be disposed of. After being ferried back to London, engine number four was replaced and major work was undertaken to return the aircraft to service, where some crews nicknamed it "the flying ashtray." G-BDXH also entered the Guinness Book of Records as the longest glide in a non-purpose built aircraft until it was replaced by the Air Transat Flight 236 incident.

At the time of this incident, this 747 was considered to be the most severely damaged aircraft to have maintained flight and land safely.

Although the airspace around Mount Galunggung was closed temporarily after the accident, it was re-opened and it was only after a Singapore Airlines 747 was forced to shut down three of its engines while flying through the same area nineteen days later, that Indonesian authorities closed the airspace permanently and re-routed airways to avoid the area, and a watch was set up to monitor clouds of ash.

The crew received various awards, including Her Majesty The Queen's Commendations for Valuable Service in the Air and medals from the British Air Line Pilots Association. It is commonly reported that Eric Moody conducted most of the activity during the emergency, however he was absent from the flight deck for substantial periods of time, and thus, credit should be given to the First Officer and the Flight Engineer. The Flight Engineer would have been the person who had got the engines to restart, and thus was more than likely the real hero of the day.

In a nearly identical incident in 1989, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Flight 867 from Amsterdam to Anchorage, Alaska, flew into the plume of the erupting Mount Redoubt, causing all four engines to fail due to compressor stall. Once the flight cleared the ash cloud, it was able to restart each engine and then made a safe landing at Anchorage, though, like City of Edinburgh, it was substantially damaged.

[edit] References

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