On 24 June 1982, the route was flown by the City of Edinburgh, a Boeing 747-236B registered as G-BDXH. The aircraft flew into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung around 110 miles (180km) south-east of Jakarta, Indonesia, resulting in the failure of all four engines. Partly because the event occurred at night, obscuring the cloud, the reason for the failure was not immediately apparent to the crew or air traffic control. The aircraft was diverted to Jakarta in the hope that enough engines could be restarted to allow it to land there. The aircraft glided out of the ash cloud, and all engines were restarted (although one started vibrating and the crew had to shut it down soon after), allowing the aircraft to land safely at Halim Perdanakusuma Airport in Jakarta.
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]
At the time of the incident, the flight crew of BA009 consisted of 32-year-old Senior First Officer Roger Greaves, 40-year-old Senior Engineer Officer Barry Townley-Freeman, and 41-year-old[3]Captain Eric Henry Moody. The flight crew members had boarded the aircraft at Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Kuala Lumpur and were due to pilot the 747-200 for the Malaysia to Perth Airport leg.[4]
Shortly after 13:40 UTC (20:40 Jakarta time) above the Indian Ocean, south of Java, the crew first noticed an unusual effect on the windscreen similar to St. Elmo's fire, while Moody was heading to the lavatory.[1] Despite the weather radar showing clear skies, the crew switched on engine anti-ice and the passenger seat belt signs as a precaution.
As the flight progressed, smoke began to accumulate in the passenger cabin of the aircraft; it was first assumed to be cigarette smoke. However, it soon began to grow thicker and had an odour of sulphur. Passengers who had a view of the aircraft's engines through the window noted that they were unusually bright blue, with light shining forward through the fan blades and producing a stroboscopic effect.[5]
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 glide ratio of roughly 15:1, meaning it can glide forward 15 kilometres for every kilometre it drops. The flight crew quickly determined that the aircraft was capable of gliding for 23 minutes and covering 91 nautical miles (169km) from its flight level of 37,000 feet (11,000m).[5] At 13:44 UTC (20:44 Jakarta time), Greaves broadcast a Mayday to the local air traffic control authority, stating that all four engines had failed. However, Jakarta Area Control misunderstood the message, interpreting the call as meaning that only engine number four had shut down. After a nearby Garuda Indonesia flight relayed the message to them, air traffic control correctly understood the urgent message. Despite the crew "squawking" the emergency transponder setting of 7700, air traffic control could not locate the 747 on their radar screens.
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 (3,500m) 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 (3,700m), 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 (8,500m). 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 1,800m per minute to an altitude where there was enough pressure in the outside atmosphere to breathe almost normally.
At 13,500 feet (4,100m), 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 (3,700m).
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
Damaged engine parts from BA009 on display at Auckland Museum
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.
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]
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 London Heathrow to Sydney, but in March 2012, the route was curtailed to Bangkok until July 2022, then it was terminated permanently.
G-BDXH, operating for European Aviation Air Charter in August 2003, six months before it was withdrawn from use.
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 European Aviation Air Charter in January 2002. The aircraft was taken out of service in February 2004, and in July 2009, the then-30-year-old aircraft was broken up at a breaking facility at Bournemouth International Airport.[15]
Captain Eric Moody died on 18th March 2024 at the age of 82.[16]
In popular culture
The Discovery Channel Canada / National Geographic TV series Mayday featured Flight 009 in a 2007 episode titled "Falling From the Sky" which featured interviews with the flight crew and passengers, and a dramatization of the flight.[17]
See also
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
Kalitta Air is an American cargo airline headquartered at Willow Run Airport, Ypsilanti Township, Michigan. The company operates international scheduled and cargo charter services. Its call sign "Connie" is from its founder, Connie Kalitta.
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Mount Galunggung is an active stratovolcano in West Java, Indonesia, around 80 km (50 mi) southeast of the West Java provincial capital, Bandung. Mount Galunggung is part of the Sunda Arc extending through Sumatra, Java and the Lesser Sunda Islands, which has resulted from the subduction of the Australian plate beneath the Eurasian plate.
The Boeing 747-400 is a large, long-range wide-body airliner produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes, an advanced variant of the initial Boeing 747. The "Advanced Series 300" was announced at the September 1984 Farnborough Airshow, targeting a 10% cost reduction with more efficient engines and 1,000 nautical miles [nmi] of additional range. Northwest Airlines became the first customer with an order for 10 aircraft on October 22, 1985. The first 747-400 was rolled out on January 26, 1988, and made its maiden flight on April 29, 1988. Type certification was received on January 9, 1989, and it entered service with NWA on February 9, 1989.
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An emergency landing is a premature landing made by an aircraft in response to an emergency involving an imminent or ongoing threat to the safety and operation of the aircraft, or involving a sudden need for a passenger or crew on board to terminate the flight. It typically involves a forced diversion to the nearest or most suitable airport or airbase, or an off airport landing or ditching if the flight cannot reach an airfield. Flights under air traffic control will be given priority over all other aircraft operations upon the declaration of the emergency.
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Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport is an international airport in Jakarta, Indonesia. The airport is located in East Jakarta and the airfield is conjoined with the Halim Perdanakusuma air force base of the Indonesian Air Force.
On 15 December 1989, KLM Flight 867, en route from Amsterdam to Narita International Airport Tokyo, was forced to make an emergency landing at Anchorage International Airport, Alaska, when all four engines failed. The Boeing 747-406M, less than six months old at the time, flew through a thick cloud of volcanic ash from Mount Redoubt, which had erupted the day before.
Garuda Indonesia Flight 421 was a scheduled domestic flight operated by Indonesian flag carrier Garuda Indonesia travelling about 625 km from Ampenan to Yogyakarta. On January 16, 2002, the flight encountered severe thunderstorm activity during approach to its destination, suffered flameout in both engines, and ditched in a shallow river, resulting in one fatality and several injuries.
A Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) is a group of experts responsible for coordinating and disseminating information on atmospheric volcanic ash clouds that may endanger aviation. As at 2019, there are nine Volcanic Ash Advisory Centers located around the world, each one focusing on a particular geographical region. Their analyses are made public in the form of volcanic ash advisories (VAAs), involving expertise analysis of satellite observations, ground and pilot observations and interpretation of ash dispersion models.
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Plumes of volcanic ash near active volcanoes are a flight safety hazard, especially for night flights. Volcanic ash is hard and abrasive, and can quickly cause significant wear to propellers and turbocompressor blades, and scratch cockpit windows, impairing visibility. The ash contaminates fuel and water systems, can jam gears, and make engines flame out. Its particles have low melting points, so they melt in the engines' combustion chamber then the ceramic mass sticks to turbine blades, fuel nozzles, and combustors—which can lead to total engine failure. Ash can also contaminate the cabin and damage avionics.
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