BA Flight 009

I came across an amazing story in the UK’s Daily Mail which was making the rounds on the front page of Reddit. It was about a British Airways flight that flew through the dust cloud from a volcanic eruption near Indonesia in 1982 and lost all four engines.

With unbelievable restraint, Captain Eric Moody addressed British Airways flight 009 as his Boeing 747 drifted inexorably down towards the Indian Ocean.

Displaying the stiff-upper-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.’

The crew didn’t panic as all four engines failed and the jumbo became the world’s largest glider. They knew how their plane handled with no power and how much time they had aloft. As oxygen masks deployed, the captain realized that not all of them worked. In order to keep his passengers alive, he traded 6,000 ft of altitude (sort of important when you have no power) so they could breathe. Amazingly, as he flew into denser air, three out of four engines were able to restart and he was able to get his plane on the ground in one piece in spite of no instruments and a damaged windshield.

It’s moments like this when you really appreciate what pilots do. On routine flights, autopilots and ILS systems can handle the workload, but when things go wrong, you want someone who knows what to do in charge. The amount of training that airline crews go through is what makes it possible to make good decisions under pressure.

I’ve had a long standing love affair with planes and flying so this story may not mean much to you, but it got me thinking so I thought I’d share. While most of us will never be in a position where our decisions directly affect this many lives, the general lesson here still holds. You have to practice your craft and stay ready so when the time comes, you can act with confidence and achieve your objective. This lesson applies throughout life - in sports, in school, at work.

Note: Image and quote from The Story of BA flight 009 and the words every passenger dreads… by Zoe Brennan