Thread by @Care2much18

Today is the 41st anniversary of British Airways Flight 009 and Captain Eric Moody's legendary understatement in his address to passengers.

"Ladies and gentleman. This is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped."

It's a great story. /1

British Airways Flight 009 was from Heathrow to Auckland on June 24th, 1982, with scheduled stops in Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, Perth, and Melbourne.

The plane was a Boeing 747-236B named 'City of Edinburgh' and had 248 passengers and 15 crew on board at the time of the incident.

The first 2 legs of the trip uneventful.

Captain Eric Moody, First Officer Roger Greaves and Second Officer Barry Townley-Freeman swapped in at Kuala Lumpur to relieve first flight crew.

They'd be the ones taking the plane to Auckland, though didn't actually make it that day.

At around 8:40pm local time, flying over the Indian Ocean at 37,000 feet, Captain Moody finished his dinner.

He left the cockpit but crew toilet was occupied, so he went downstairs to the passenger toilets.

A flight attendant said "you're wanted immediately in the cockpit".

When he got back to the cockpit, he expected to be informed of a problem but the other pilots said "come and look at this, it's beautiful"

The cockpit and windscreen was lit up in remarkable colours, the pilots had never seen before.

A phenomenon known as St. Elmo's Fire.

It's defined as:

When the atmosphere becomes charged and an electrical potential strong enough to cause a discharge (plasma) is created between an object and the air around it.

Passengers thought it was magical, like being in a disco, not realizing they were all likely to die.

Captain Moody had noticed smoke on his way back to the cockpit but this was the early 1980's when you could still smoke on planes.

So it wasn't immediately obvious to him what it was.

Not until he smelled the smoke entering the cockpit and it smelled acrid and sulphuric.

The Boeing 747 Rolls-Royce RB211 engines started to flame out, one by one.

Engine number four was the first to go, then engine number two and within a few minutes all engines had failed.

Pilots couldn't believe what was happening and also had not one clue why it was happening.

Unknown to pilots, they had just flown through an ash cloud from a nearby erupting volcano.

Mount Galunggung, an active stratovolcano in West Java, Indonesia.

The pilots weather radar didn't detect anything because it was designed to detect moisture and the ash cloud was dry.

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Eric Moody. We have a small problem. All four engines have failed. We're doing our utmost to get them going. I trust you're not in too much distress, and would the senior cabin crew member please come to the flight deck."

Oxygen masks dropped and passengers were in fact in very significant distress, despite the captain's best efforts to keep them calm.

As the plane lost altitude, many were crying and petrified.

A lot began writing goodbye letters to relatives, that they hoped would be found.

Among the roughly 100 New Zealanders on board was Betty Ferguson, then Betty Tootell.

Betty wrote a book "All Four Engines Have Failed: The True and Triumphant Story of Flight BA 009 and the 'Jakarta Incident'"

She talks about it from the passengers perspective, captivating.

Meanwhile, Captain Moody and the pilots approached the problem methodically.

"What the bloody hell have we done wrong and how do we fix it? Good pilots have that mindset, it's our fault, now sort it out!"

Of course it wasn't their fault but that approach enabled good decisions.

Boeing 747-200's had a glide ratio of a little under 15:1, meaning the plane can glide 15km's forward for every 1km lost in altitude.

That gave the pilots some time to think.

They calculated they had 20 odd minutes before having to ditch the plane somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

A nearby pilot of a Garuda flight helped, when a message got lost in translation.

When BA pilots informed Jakarta ATC all four engines failed, Air Traffic Controller thought they meant engine number four failed.

Attentive Garuda pilot communicated in Indonesian the situation.

After gliding from 37,000 feet down to 13,000 feet, managed to get one engine to restart, one by one all restarted.

They needed to climb to clear mountains but no sooner had they cleared them, engines started to fail again.

"We need to get this on the ground, now!" - Cpt. Moody

Pilots faced a huge problem in emergency landing at night in Jakarta's Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport.

Volcanic ash sandblasted the windscreens, so they couldn't see a thing outside of the plane.

Couldn't see the runway.

An instrument-only landing.

Captain Moody described the landing as "like negotiating your way up a badgers arse", colourful imagery for flying blind, with no glideslope.

They managed to work together and put the plane down on the runway.

Everyone on board survived, with no physical injuries.

Pilots were awarded all sorts of medals and honours for heroism, including the Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air.

They also set a new world record, acknowledged by Guinness Book of Records, for the "longest glide in a non-purpose-built aircraft".

Great job 👏

P.s. MenTourPilot did a fantastic video on this last year, that features an interview with the man himself Captain Eric Moody.

It's titled "What These Pilots did was Amazing! | British Airways Flight 9"

Well worth watching.

@suziemc16 It's a fantastic story, still unbelievable that they managed to save so many lives. All of the lives, even!

@jenelaina Haha! It's a great video, I've watched it at least 5 times, might watch it again later.

@mrssweeneybull I love it, did so well to get that plane down safely 🙂