With unbelievable restraint, Captain Eric Moody
addressed British Airways flight 009 as his Boeing 747 drifted
inexorably down towards the Indian Ocean. Displaying the stiffupper-lip
spirit that built an empire, he uttered the words that are
every air passenger's worst nightmare: '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 it
under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.' Minutes
before, while cruising at ten kilometers above the sea, Captain
Moody had instructed his first officer to send a Mayday call to
ground control in nearby Indonesia.
The date was June 24, 1982, and this extraordinary flight has
since gone down in aviation history. Incredibly, passengers and
crew reacted to the captain's cataclysmic announcement not
with screams and hysteria, but with an extraordinary calm as the
realisation that they were almost certainly sinking to their deaths
hit home. Looking out of the aircraft windows, they could see that
their plane was coated in an eerie white light and that the
engines were on fire, with great jets of flame trailing into the sky.
The cabin was now filled with a thick, sulphuric smoke, and the
mighty jet bucked up and down as if it were a piece of flotsam
adrift on stormy seas.
This is an unique opportunity for all to join Capt Moody
as he discusses this event.