British Airways Flight 009

British Airways Flight 009, sometimes referred to by its callsign Speedbird 9 or as the Jakarta incident,

The crew members of the accident segment had boarded the aircraft in Kuala Lumpur, while many of the passengers had been aboard since the flight began in London.[2]

Incident

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At the time of the incident, the flight crew of BA009 consisted of 32-year-old

Around 13:42 UTC (20:42 Jakarta time), the number-four Rolls-Royce RB211 engine began surging and soon flamed out. The flight crew immediately performed the engine shutdown drill, quickly cutting off fuel supply and arming the fire extinguishers. Less than a minute later, at 13:43 UTC (20:43 Jakarta time), engine two surged and flamed out. Within seconds, and almost simultaneously, engines one and three flamed out, prompting the flight engineer to exclaim, "I don't believe it—all four engines have failed!"^[5]

Without engine thrust, a 747-200 has a

Many passengers, fearing for their lives, wrote notes to relatives.^[2]

Owing to the high Indonesian mountains on the south coast of the island of Java, an altitude of at least 11,500 feet (3,500 m) was required to cross the coast safely. The crew decided that if the aircraft was unable to maintain altitude by the time they reached 12,000 feet (3,700 m), they would turn back out to sea and attempt to ditch into the Indian Ocean. The crew began engine restart drills, despite being well outside the recommended maximum engine in-flight start envelope altitude of 28,000 feet (8,500 m). The restart attempts failed.

Despite the lack of time, Moody made an announcement to the passengers that has been described as "a masterpiece of understatement":^[5]

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.^[5][6][7]

As pressure within the cabin fell, oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling – an automatic emergency measure to make up for the lack of air. On the flight deck, however, Greaves's mask was broken; the delivery tube had detached from the rest of the mask. Moody swiftly decided to descend at 1,800 m per minute to an altitude where there was enough pressure in the outside atmosphere to breathe almost normally.

At 13,500 feet (4,100 m), the crew was approaching the altitude at which they would have to turn over the ocean and attempt a risky ditching. Although the crew had guidelines for the water landing procedure, no one had ever tried it in a Boeing 747. As they performed the engine restart procedure, engine number four finally started, and at 13:56 UTC (20:56 Jakarta time), Moody used its power to reduce the rate of descent. Shortly thereafter, engine three restarted, allowing him to climb slowly. Shortly after that, engines one and two successfully restarted, as well.^[8] The crew subsequently requested and expedited an increase in altitude to clear the high mountains of Indonesia.^[9]

As the aircraft approached its target altitude, the St. Elmo's fire effect on the windscreen returned. Moody throttled back, but engine number two surged again and was shut down. The crew immediately descended and held 12,000 feet (3,700 m).

As Flight 009 approached Jakarta's Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport,^[10] the crew found seeing anything through the windscreen difficult, and made the approach almost entirely on instruments, despite reports of good visibility. The crew decided to fly the instrument landing system, but the vertical guidance system was inoperative, so they were forced to fly with only the lateral guidance as the first officer monitored the airport's distance-measuring equipment (DME). He then called out how high they should be at each DME step along the final approach to the runway, creating a virtual glide slope for them to follow. Moody described it as "a bit like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse."^[1] Although the runway lights could be made out through a small strip of the windscreen, the landing lights on the aircraft seemed to be inoperable. After landing, the flight crew found taxiing impossible, due to glare from apron floodlights, which made the already sandblasted windscreen opaque. Upon disembarking, the flight engineer knelt at the bottom of the steps and kissed the ground. When Moody asked why, the engineer replied that “The Pope does it,” to which Moody responded: “He flies Alitalia.”^[11]

Investigation

Postflight investigation revealed that City of Edinburgh's problems had been caused by flying through a cloud of volcanic ash from the eruption of Mount Galunggung. Because the ash cloud was dry, it did not appear on the weather radar, which was designed to detect the moisture in clouds. The dust in the cloud deprived the engines of sufficient oxygen from the atmosphere to maintain combustion, sandblasted the windscreen and landing-light covers, and clogged the engines. As the ash entered the engines, it melted in the combustion chambers and adhered to the inside of the power plant. As the engine cooled from inactivity, and as the aircraft descended out of the ash cloud, the molten ash solidified and enough broke off for air to again flow smoothly through the engine, allowing a successful restart. The engines had enough electrical power to crank, ignite, and restart because one generator and the on-board batteries were still operating.

Aftermath

Engines one, two, and three were replaced at Jakarta, as was the windscreen, and the fuel tanks were cleared of the ash that had entered them through the pressurization ducts, badly contaminating the fuel. After the aircraft was ferried back to London, engine number four was replaced and major work was undertaken to return the 747 to service.

Following its emergency landing at Halim Airport in Jakarta, the crew and passengers of British Airways Flight 009 stayed for several days in Jakarta. Some stayed at the Sahid Jaya Hotel and some stayed at the Sari Pan Pacific Hotel, while the first class passengers were flown to Perth in a UTA Airlines flight.^[12] While staying in Jakarta, the passengers and crew of British Airways Flight 009 got the chance to have a tour of the city and visited Taman Mini Indonesia Indah.^[12] After two days in Jakarta, the passengers and crew of British Airways Flight 009 were flown by another British Airways flight to Perth, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand.^[12]

Although the airspace around Mount Galunggung was closed temporarily after the accident, it was reopened days later. Only after a Singapore Airlines 747 was forced to shut down three of its engines while it was flying through the same area 19 days later, on 13 July, would Indonesian authorities close the airspace permanently and reroute airways to avoid the area. A watch was set up to monitor clouds of ash.^[5] Flight 009 was not the first encounter with that eruption; a Garuda DC-9 had encountered ash on 5 April 1982.^[13]

The crew received various awards, including the

One of the passengers, Betty Tootell, wrote a book about the accident, All Four Engines Have Failed, and had managed to trace some 200 of the 247 passengers on the flight. In 1993, Tootell married fellow passenger James Ferguson, who had been seated in the row in front of her. She later noted: "The 28th December 2006 marks the start of our 14th year of honeymoon, and on the 24th June 2007, many passengers and crew will no doubt gather to celebrate the 25th anniversary of our mid-air adventure."[12]

British Airways continued to operate the Flight 009 route from

The aircraft involved, G-BDXH, named City of Edinburgh, later renamed City of Elgin, was repaired and continued to fly for British Airways after the accident, before being sold to

Captain Eric Moody died on 18th March 2024 at the age of 82.[16]

In popular culture

The

• Singapore Airlines Flight 21A – a similar incident that occurred to a Boeing 747 less than a month later in the same area
• KLM Flight 867 – a nearly identical incident occurred to a Boeing 747 in Alaska in 1989
• List of airline flights that required gliding
• Volcanic ash and aviation safety

References