Paul Holmes: Intelligent call to prevent disaster

Passenger Sybil Ferguson photographed during the mid-air crisis by her husband Jim.

I don't know why Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, erupted this week. Perhaps it did so because of its name and, if so, I don't blame it. But the drastic and urgent closure of all British, Finnish, Danish and Swedish airspace and the subsequent cancellation of hundreds of flights because of the massive cloud of volcanic ash from the eruption brings to mind one of the most remarkable stories I dealt with in my career. I interviewed a couple of the people who went through an aviation terror and survived.

It was the night of June 24, 1982. A British Airways Boeing 747 with 247 people took off from Kuala Lumpur, bound for Perth. Directly in its flight path, however, was a cloud of volcanic ash from the eruption of Mt Galunggung on the island of Java.

The aircraft, under the command of Captain Eric Moody, was tracking to the south of Java, on which is the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

At 8.40pm local time it was safely in the cruise at 35,000ft. Captain Moody was in the lavatory. His First Officer Roger Greaves was on the flight deck with the Flight Engineer Barry Townley-Freeman. The crew suddenly noticed through the cockpit windscreen a strange electrical fire effect which they assumed was St Elmo's fire. The radar showed clear skies.

Captain Moody, having finished his business, came back to the flight deck, looked out at what he also concluded was an electrical-type disturbance and decided to activate the passenger seat belt signs. Just in case.

As the flight continued a cloud developed in the passenger cabin. People assumed it was cigarette smoke. After a few minutes, the smoke got thicker and began to smell sulphurous.

A few minutes later number four engine started to surge and the crew shut it down. Seconds later all remaining three engines went dead. The Flight Engineer called out, "I don't believe it. All four engines have failed!"

The skipper put the aircraft into a glide, alerted the Jakarta tower of his situation and headed their way. Jakarta would have understood this was a major crisis in the making and that the night could become one of mayhem.

Later, when I interviewed the captain, he told me that he flew the aircraft while the First Officer and the Flight Engineer grabbed the manual and went to work to find out how you restart engines at 35,000ft.

There was one looming problem. Captain Moody had to clear a mountain range on Java's southern coast that reached a hight of 11,000ft. He would have to allow himself at least 1000ft of clearance.

He was going to have to make a decision. If he could not maintain an altitude of some 12,000ft before the mountains he would have to turn back out to sea and prepare to ditch the giant aircraft. No one had done that before. No one has tried to do it since. There was nothing in the manual about ditching a jumbo jet in an ocean.

In the passenger cabin there was the most appalling panic and the fear of imminent death. Some passengers wrote goodbye letters to loved ones.

The captain, mindful of the feelings of the hundreds in the cabin below him got on the horn and made probably the most extraordinary announcement an airline skipper has made.

Moody said, "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 under control. I trust you are not in too much distress."

Bear in mind, the crew had no idea why they had experienced such catastrophic engine failure. The aircraft's radar was designed only to detect moisture, which would indicate rain and cloud ahead of them, not dry clouds of volcanic ash.

Neither did they realise at this stage in the dark night that their windscreen had been rendered opaque from the sand blasting effect of the ash.

But the passengers, despite the considerate words of the captain, were horrifically distressed.

One passenger was a middle-aged woman by the name of Betty Tootell. Betty went on to write a book about the terrible 11 or so minutes that changed the lives of the 247 passengers and 16 crew on board. Betty later managed to trace some 200 of them and wrote a book about the incident, All Four Engines Have Failed.

When it was published in 1985, I interviewed her. British Airways sent Captain Moody out to this part of the world to support her in her book tour and Betty later went on to marry the man who had been seated in front of her on that awful flight. The by-then much decorated captain was a pleasant, cheerful, stocky little man, ex-air force, I imagine.

What I remember most about Betty's book are the photographs, from on the flight and disembarking. It was the eyes. Every person photographed had eyes like saucers. Wide, open eyes, frightened, full of dread. Their faces were deathly pale masks.

Despite the crew's frantic work in the cockpit, nothing worked. Minutes were flowing by, the aircraft gliding steadily on its inevitable descent.

At 13,500ft the captain was making his decision. He was not going to clear the mountains. He would have to turn back out to sea and attempt to ditch in the Indian Ocean at night. Madness, of course, but he had no other option.

Suddenly, engine number four started up. Captain Moody was able to pull the aircraft's nose up slightly and reduce his rate of descent. Then engine number three started, followed by engines one and two. The captain was climbing now and headed again for Jakarta. Then engine number two became uncontrollable and had to be shut down.

Moody approached Jakarta on three engines. What he found strange was that, despite Jakarta control tower's reporting good visibility, he and his crew could see little except a vague glow of city lights, as though through a haze.

This was the result of the windshield being sand blasted.

He approached the runway and landed successfully on instruments.

Captain Moody later described this process as "a bit like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse." After landing, he could not taxi to the terminal because he could see nothing, so the plane was towed in.

I recall Betty Tootell telling me that the moment the aircraft rolled out to a stop, all the passengers starting cheering and applauding. And not a few tears of relief, I imagine.

It was because of this so-called "Jakarta Incident" in 1982 that the authorities in Europe wasted no time in closing so much of the European airspace this week.