Original subtitles

High above the Indian Ocean, disaster strikes.

The engine's on fire.

More than six miles in the air,

all four engines of a British Airways 747 stop working.

Roger, declare emergency.

Mayday, mayday, mayday.

Speed Bird--

With no engines and little power,

British Airways Flight 9 falls towards the ocean.

Standby ignition on.

The crew fights to keep their plane

from crashing into the sea.

What has crippled their massive jet,

threatening the lives of everyone on board?

Ladies and gentlemen, we are starting our approach.

We lost both engines.

Put the mask over your nose.

Emergency descent.

Brace for impact!

I think I lost one.

Investigation started.

Is there a crash?

June 24, 1982.

British Airways Flight 9 cruises through the sky

over Indonesia.

In a few hours, the plane and all 263 people on board

are scheduled to land in Perth, Australia.

Phyllis Welch and her daughter are

seated in Cabin E at the very back of the enormous jet.

How's that heroine of yours, Fanny Price, faring?

She's having a tough old time at Mansfield Park.

It's a good place for me to spend a few hours.

I don't mind being there myself.

That's all right, Mum. We'll get there.

We had already traversed at least two time zones.

We were very tired.

We had flown through Bombay, through Kuala Lumpur.

Hadn't been able to get much sleep, if any,

and it was a dark dark, pitch black night.

Ahead of Betty and Phyllis, Charles Capewell

was returning home to Perth, Australia

with his two boys, Chas and Stephen.

Settle down, lads.

Come on.

It's time for a nap.

Get back to your seat.

No.

What?

Do you want to sleep here?

All right.

It was a good flight. It was going well.

Leaving London, it was great.

And we was all eager to go home,

and the two boys were eager to get back to mom.

I thought we'd be home in three hours, Perth.

They'll be pat.

We'll get in a taxi, and we'll be home.

While many of the passengers

have been traveling for almost a day,

the crew is fresh.

They took control at the last stopover in Kuala Lumpur.

Captain Eric Moody got his first taste

of flying at the age of 16, when he took a gliding lesson.

He was one of the first ever trained on the 747.

Roger, check with Jakarta.

She got to control--

Speed Bird 9 over Helene at level 3709.

Speed Bird 9, Roger.

First officer, Roger Greaves,

has been a co-pilot for more than six years.

Barry Townley Freeman has been a flight engineer

on these aircraft for just a little longer.

I'd not flown with Eric before or Barry.

That was the first time we'd actually met, on that flight.

As the jet flies over the city of Jakarta,

it's cruising at more than 36,000 feet

and has been in the air for an hour and a half.

Captain Moody checks his weather radar.

It shows smooth sailing for the next 300 miles.

All right, Roger. It's all clear.

Just keep your eyes open. I'll be back in a moment.

Just got to use the loo.

Back in the cabin, many of the passengers

have fallen asleep.

While Charles Capewell and his sons doze,

an ominous haze appears above their heads.

It's still legal to smoke on passenger jets in 1982.

For the cabin crew though, the smoke

seems thicker than normal.

Seems to be a lot of smoke out there.

They begin to worry that a small fire may

be smoldering somewhere on the plane.

Maybe someone lit up in the toilet.

Let's go see if we can find it.

A fire at 36,000 feet is a terrifying prospect.

If there is a blaze somewhere, the crew

must find it immediately.

In the cockpit, the flight takes an unsettling turn.

Barry and I were just sitting

there, minding the shop.

Pitch dark night, of course, and then

we started to get these pinpricks of light

on the windscreen.

St. Elmo's Fire?

I don't think so.

It's not moving the way it should.

St. Elmo's Fire is a natural phenomenon that's

sometimes seen when planes fly through highly charged thunder

clouds, but there aren't supposed to be

any thunder clouds tonight.

Anything on the radar?

No.

No, it's clear.

I don't like the look of this.

Let's get a better look out there.

With the help of their landing lights,

the two men are disturbed to see a thin layer of cloud

surrounding their plane, even though nothing

is showing up on their radar.

But at 37,000 feet,

the normal thing you would anticipate

would be high cirrus, which is just a thin layer of cloud.

I think we better get the captain back up here.

I was reading my book, and there

was a slight flick of turbulence--

just a slight flick.

And I glanced over to the left, where I had

a clear view of the port wing.

And to my surprise, it was covered

in a brilliant white, shimmering light,

which seemed to be clinging to the wing of the aircraft.

I carried on reading, but I found

that I kept reading the same paragraph

over and over again and not taking in a word of it.

I just didn't know what was happening.

In the cabin, the smoke begins to thicken.

Stewards have been unable to figure out

where it's coming from.

If there's a fire, they can't find it.

All right, well, go see that the passengers

are comfortable.

You smell anything odd, Mum?

Seems rather smoky in here.

I noticed that thick smoke was pouring into the cabin

through the vents above the windows,

and that was a very sobering sight.

Turkish cigarettes?

It smelled like sort of the sulfuric electrical smell,

and I went on that flight deck expecting to hear that we had

some electrical smoke somewhere on the aircraft,

but nothing was further from the truth.

When did it start?

Well, just after you stepped out.

Anything on radar?

No, it's clear. Not a cloud.

Oh, my Lord!

Look at engine four!

It's lit up somehow.

Captain, Captain, have a look at number one.

It's the same on my side.

None of the crew have ever seen anything like this

before, but the light show is just the beginning.

Their bizarre flight is about to take a terrifying turn

for the worse.

This light show, if you like it, became more intense.

In fact, we ended up sitting there

with two sheets of brilliant white light in front of us

in place of the windscreens.

Inside the cabin, smoke

has been growing thicker.

Chief Steward Graham Skinner has

been organizing an intense, but quiet search for fire.

What's with all the smoke?

There was smoke in the cabin.

It got really, really hot.

You were perspiring.

Literally drenched in perspiration.

The acrid smoke was at the back of your throat, up your nose,

in your eyes, and you're rubbing this,

and your eyes were running.

And it was not a very nice situation at all.

Flight Engineer Barry Townley-Freeman

has been checking his instruments carefully.

He smelled the smoke, but so far has

no indication that there's a fire

in any of the plane's systems.

We can't find anything.

With one mystery confronting them,

they are suddenly faced with a frightening new situation.

Dad, the engine's on fire!

The hole of the wing was a sheet of light,

and I said, oh, we better close that, because we

don't know what's that.

Then I realized that, you know,

something was dramatically wrong.

There were huge flames coming out

of the back of the engines.

20-- some people said 40 feet long.

These huge jets of sheer flame shooting out of the back

of all the engines.

Is it going to penetrate from the outside of the aircraft?

Is it going to come into the cabin?

Are we going to burn to death?

Are we going to choke to death on the smoke?

What's going to happen?

What's causing it?

What are they going to do about it?

As the fire engulfs the engines, one of them

revs loudly and flames out.

Engine failure-- number four.

Fire action, number four.

Checklist, power and gear.

Set.

Thrust lever.

Closed.

Start lever.

Off.

Once one engine fails,

you call for the drill to shut that one down.

You have drills for certain things

so that you don't fly together as a crew forever.

You can fly with different people then,

and you can standardize the operations.

The instruments do not indicate a fire

on the plane, but the passengers can see flames

erupting from the engines and stretching

down the length of the 747.

I could not see the engines from where I was sitting.

I could only see the space behind them,

but there was enough glow in that space to convince me

that the aircraft was really seriously on fire.

We were in trouble.

They knew that-- as long as they were--

they knew we were in bad, bad trouble,

and they just looked at me as if to say,

well, what do we do now, Dad?

The 747 is more than six miles above the ocean.

Its engines appear to be burning,

and the peculiar smoke continues to fill the cabin.

And then the unthinkable happens.

Number two engine's gone.

All right, then begin the engine shutdown.

No, wait!

They've all gone.

All four engines have failed!

The other three just went out

almost immediately, and that's when it begins

to be a serious emergency.

Those engines made a grating rumbling sound almost

like a cement mixer, and then gradually

the noise just disappeared, and they became silent.

A minute and a half, we've gone from four engines running

normally to having none.

The 747 has plenty of fuel.

Yet somehow, all four of the jet's engines

have completely stopped working.

Roger, declare an emergency.

Mayday, mayday, mayday, Speed Bird 9, we have lost

all four engines out of 3-7-0.

Mayday, mayday, mayday, Speed Bird 9,

we have lost all four engines out of 3-7-0.

With no engine power and no idea what has crippled

their plane, British Airways Flight 9

begins falling from the sky.

Jakarta control, Speed Bird 9, we have lost all

four engines now out of 3-6-0.

First officer Roger Greaves issues a mayday,

but he has trouble getting his message across.

Speed Bird 9, have you got a problem?

Jakarta Control, Speed Bird 9,

we have lost all four engines-- repeat, all four engines.

Now descending through flight level 3-5-0.

Speed Bird 9, you have

lost number four engine?

This idiot doesn't understand.

Jakarta Control, Speed Bird 9,

we have lost all four engines-- repeat, all four engines.

Now descending through flight level 3-5-0.

The air traffic control at Jakarta,

unfortunately, seemed to have a slight problem

in understanding what we actually were saying.

--all four engines.

Only when another plane nearby

relays the mayday call do controllers in

Jakarta understand.

Now descending through flight level 3-5-0.

Speed Bird 9, all four engines out.

Understood.

Standing by.

As far as the crew knows,

no 747 had ever lost power to all of its engines before.

The crew has to find out why it's happening now.

I think we've corked something up.

We were concerned and worried that we'd

done something wrong, you know, to cause the whole thing.

All three of us felt exactly the same,

and it was a personal guilt in the sense

of what have I missed?

What have I done wrong?

You know, because this kind of thing doesn't happen.

While not built for gliding,

even without its engines,

a 747 can travel forward nine miles

for every half mile it drops.

With no power, Flight 9 has started a long, slow fall.

Some six miles above the ocean, the crew has less than half

an hour before they smash into the sea.

When they all stop, you go into automatic

mode, obviously.

We had practiced this drill on the simulator

many, many times,

and that's very good and all very well,

as long as when it happens to you for real, what happens

on the airplane is mirrored by what

happens to you in the simulator,

and I'm afraid that wasn't so.

In the simulator, when all four engines stop,

the autopilot turns off, but high above the Indian Ocean,

Captain Moody sees that his autopilot is still on.

We were all three confused and concerned

that what was happening to us wasn't what we'd been told

would happen to us.

All right. Begin restart drill.

In the heat of the situation,

they have no time to figure out why the autopilot is still on.

On.

Anything?

-Anything? -No.

Again.

All right, then.

-From the top, battery? -Check. On.

Crossfeed valves?

Open.

Fire switch?

In.

The standard restart drill takes up to 3 minutes

-to complete. -Fuel pressure--

Plunging from the sky,

the crew has fewer than 10 chances

to get their engines going before they run out of time.

Stop lever, on.

Come on.

Again, gentlemen.

All right, from the top-- battery?

Check. On.

Crossfeed valves?

Open.

Fire switch?

In.

At 32,000 feet, Captain Eric Moody

decides to turn the plane back toward the closest airport,

Halim, just outside Jakarta, but even that is too far away

if he can't get at least some

of the engines going again.

Jakarta, Speed Bird 9 turning left

back to Halim out of 3-0-0.

Speed Bird 9, radar cannot see you.

Squawk Alpha 7700.

Air traffic control asks

them to transmit the emergency transponder signal.

Jakarta, Speed Bird 9, we are already squawking 7-7-0-0.

Now, the crew is flying back to an airport that

can't find them on the radar.

Without the constant rumble of the engines,

the cabin is quiet.

Some of the passengers feel the plane beginning to descend,

but without communication from the cockpit,

they can only guess.

The quietness was unbelievable,

because it was sort of the airplane

was no engines, nothing, and it seemed to be eerie.

A bit surreal really, because looked as if it was suspended

in space or something, and all you could feel

was this quietness and the whimpering

from a few people that were really upset.

Some people were sitting quite rigidly,

almost as if they hadn't noticed anything.

At first, it was sheer fear, and then after a while,

it turns to acceptance.

You know you're going to die.

We knew we were going to die.

Captain Moody can't restart the engines, unless he

can keep the plane flying between 290

and 310 miles per hour, but the airspeed indicators

aren't working.

Captain, I've got 320 knots on my side.

Well, I've got 270.

Bloody hell! That's a 50-knot difference.

I'll change the speed.

Falling from the sky with no engine power,

the 747 crew now has no idea how fast they're going,

but to have the best chance to restart the engines,

Captain Moody has to have the plane

flying at the right speed.

So from that point onwards, Eric then varied the speed

through just about 100-knot range,

hoping that at some point or rather, coincidentally

thus putting the fuel into the engines, that we would actually

be at the right speed.

To change speeds, Captain Moody

turns the autopilot off.

Then he slowly pulls the nose of the jet up to slow it,

and then pushes it down to increase its speed.

The upsetting roller coaster movement adds to the panic

felt in the cabin.

Pressure warning, Captain!

We're at 10,000.

Pressure warning?

That's not supposed to do that.

And a warning horn went off.

Now, this didn't ever happen on the simulator

in this exercise, so it was a bit of a surprise to us.

As well as providing electrical power,

the engines on a jumbo jet help keep the cabin pressurized.

With the engines not working, of course,

the air wasn't being pumped in.

So gradually, the pressure was leaking away.

With all four engines gone,

the pressurized air is rapidly seeping out.

The thinning level of oxygen makes passengers gasp.

The crew reach for their oxygen masks,

but First Officer Greaves can't get his mask to work.

My oxygen mask-- yeah, that was a problem

I could have done without.

It was stowed above my head, and when

I pulled the oxygen mask down, the mask and the tube

became separated.

The captain must make a difficult choice.

If he continues to descend slowly,

it will get increasingly difficult

for First Officer Greaves to breathe.

Said, look, if we get down to 20,000 feet quickly,

we can all take our oxygen masks off, and we can talk,

and we're back as a crew again.

We had to actually increase the rate of descent

to descend to a lower altitude quicker, which

in the circumstances was something that we wouldn't

really have chosen to do.

So then I dived the airplane and got rid of about

6,000 feet in a minute.

The loss of cabin pressure and the steep dive

have another terrifying consequence.

The things shot down.

They sort of dangled down in front of you,

and I look to see Stephen had got his,

and Chas had pulled his out of the socket.

So I made sure that Chas got his oxygen.

I've seen a few movies on planes, and once that happens,

you know you're in serious trouble.

Help me.

Here we go.

Breathe normally, Mum, not deeply.

Breath calmly.

The oxygen masks came down.

The cabin crew tries to use

the public address system to explain what's going on,

but it's not working.

Chief Steward Graham Skinner makes

do with a low-tech backup.

Can you hear me?

We're having a small problem with the public address system.

So if you would place your masks over your mouth and nose

and breathe normally.

In the cockpit, First Officer Roger Greaves

manages to fix his broken oxygen mask,

but he's still frustrated by engines that won't start.

All right, guys.

Let's start the restart drill. Ready?

Set.

Battery

Check, off.

Standby power.

On.

Anything?

-Come on anything? -No.

All right, then.

Let's do it from the top.

Battery.

Check, off.

First Officer Greaves

and Engineer Barry Townley-Freeman

have actually shortened the standard restart drill.

It's giving them more chances to get the engines going,

but so far, nothing's working.

Come on, you old sod.

The process that we were going through the whole time

was just continuous.

We hadn't had any success with the drill at all despite all

the efforts we were putting in, but it

was the only thing we had left to cling on to,

so that's what we did.

From the top again. Battery.

Check, on.

I have no idea. I don't think any of us have,

how many times we tried to restart those engines.

If I say 20, I would think that's too low.

If I said 50, I would think that's probably about right.

As the plane falls lower and lower,

Captain Moody faces a brutal choice.

A mountain range cuts across the island

of Java between his plane and the airport.

He knows he has to be at least 11,000 feet high to clear it,

but if his engines don't restart soon,

they won't make it.

At this rate, it will crash in a matter of minutes.

It's just a question of where.

Captain Moody decides if the engines don't restart soon,

he'll turn back toward the ocean

and try landing on the water.

All right. Are we getting something?

It's not starting.

I knew it was so difficult

to land airplanes on the sea,

even when you had everything going for you.

And I thought that, well, we haven't got much going

for us here. I'd never done it before.

Hiding his concern, Captain Moody addresses

the passengers and crew.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.

We have a small problem.

All four engines have stopped.

We're doing our damnedest to get in under control.

I trust you are not in too much distress.

Most of the passengers expect the worst.

"Ma, in trouble.

"Plane going down.

"Will do best for the boys.

"We love you.

Sorry, Pal."

I thought we were going down--

heading for the ocean to crash.

And I thought if she got the note

and, you know, she knew we were still thinking about her,

and we did whatever we could.

Will we be burnt alive? Will we be choked by the smoke?

Will the aircraft break up in the air

and hurtle us out into space--

which was my biggest fear--

or we come down in the sea and be eaten by sharks alive?

Or will we crash into a mountain?

Let's crash into a mountain quickly and get all this over.

Well?

Nothing.

It's not starting.

The captain must decide

to keep flying and likely crash into the mountains

or turn around and ditch into the sea.

Start lever.

I don't know how to swim!

I couldn't swim anyway, so I thought, well, you know,

I'm doomed anyway, and I just hope

that maybe one of the passengers

might help the two boys to make sure

that they could stay afloat.

Well, anything?

-No. -All right, then.

From the top again.

Battery--

We had very few chances left of starting the engines

before having to turn out to sea again, because we wouldn't

have been able to clear the mountains

on the south coast of Java.

-Start lever. -Cut off.

Fuel pressure.

Unavailable.

Standby ignition on.

And then, as suddenly as it stopped working,

the fourth engine roars back to life.

Engine four back online.

All of a sudden there was this sort of like somebody

giving the airplane a punch from underneath,

and then I realized that there might have been an engine.

It was a pum!

Oh, my God.

Look.

The noise that a Rolls-Royce engine makes when it starts up

is low rumbling noise, and then it was just-- well,

it was wonderful to hear it.

A 747 can fly with one engine,

but Captain Moody knows that just one engine

still won't give him enough power

to clear the mountains.

The glass now is half full. It's not half empty.

We're now in with a real chance,

and I'll tell you what the three of us

would have dragged that airplane

around the whole island of Java.

As the plane falls past 13,000 feet,

another engine sputters and comes back to life.

Engine three, back online!

It's followed quickly by the final two.

Do you believe it?

Engines one and two-- both back online.

From almost certain disaster,

the crippled jet is now under full power.

I realized then that we could make it back to--

not to Perth, but to an airport.

That's all we wanted, was to land on the Earth

and be part of the living again because while we were

up there, we were dead.

Jakarta Speed Bird 9, we are back in business.

All four running.

All four running.

This time, local controllers have no trouble

understanding the message.

Speed Bird 9, all four

engines serviceable again.

Confirm continuing to Halim.

Affirmative.

Affirmative.

We say, right.

Let's get this thing on the ground as quickly as we can.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.

We seem to have overcome that problem

and have managed to start all the engines.

We are diverting to Jakarta and expect

to land in about 15 minutes.

Captain Moody begins climbing, putting

plenty of room between his plane and the mountains below,

but as he does, the strange lights

that he saw when the crisis began

reappear in front of the jet.

Now, as soon as we got to 15,000 feet,

the St. Elmo's Fire started again.

Now, I'm not slow, so I said, let's get out of here quickly.

But before he can descend very far,

the plane is stricken again.

Engine two is surging.

- -Oh no! Not again.

The whole airplane was shaking.

It was just going bang, bang, bang.

The atmosphere in the cabin was very tense and very quiet.

By then, I think very few people were talking.

I think there were quite a lot of prayers going up.

The engines backfire violently.

The captain must make another fateful decision.

Begin shutdown drill.

Checklist, powering gear.

Off.

Thrust lever.

Closed.

We were reluctant to do it as you can probably understand,

but that was it.

So we were back on three engines.

As the plane closes in on the airport,

First Officer Greaves thinks the windshield

is covered in moisture, making it hard to see through.

And I said to Eric--

I said, yeah, it's a bit misty out there.

So we turn the blowers on to kind--

like de-misters on your car-- to try and clear that.

That didn't work.

I used the windscreen wipers, and that didn't work.

Somehow the glass itself has been badly damaged.

For some other reason, I looked out the edge

of my windscreen, and about a two-inch strip down the edge

on the left-hand side, I could see

much more clearly, but I couldn't see

anything much at the front.

It was getting more and more opaque the nearer

and nearer we got to the lights.

The crew gets a final unwelcome surprise.

Equipment on the ground that helps

them descend at the proper angle isn't working.

Jakarta ATC, be advised our glide path

is unserviceable.

The localizer, which gives you

the left and right of the runway center line,

that was working, but the glide slope, which

gives you the actual profile for the descent

was not working.

After all the troubles they've been through,

now the crew has to land their plane manually.

We then continued with Eric flying the localizer

and me calling out the distance and the altitude

that he should be at.

300 feet, Captain.

So he was then able to adjust his rate of descent

to what I was telling him as far

as the glide set was concerned.

200.

150 feet, Captain.

100.

50 feet.

30 feet.

Oh, my God.

We're down.

We're on the runway!

Reverse!

90 knots, 80 knots.

We're down.

Could really go for a cold soda.

And the airplane just landed itself.

It seemed to, anyway. It kissed the Earth.

It was beautiful.

Wow, that's amazing.

Safely on the ground at Halim airport in Jakarta,

passengers celebrate the end of a harrowing ordeal.

They also want to know what happened.

No fire had been found, so why had smoke filled the cabin?

How could all four engines have stopped at nearly

the same time, and what were the strange lights

that surrounded the plane?

In the cockpit, the flight crew was

relieved, but also concerned that they might be at fault.

The first thing that we did, having parked the airplane

and shut it all down, was to then go through all

the paperwork to see if there was possibly anything anywhere

in it that might have given us any

pre-warning of some sort of phenomenon that

caused what happened to us.

--every time, because it's going to come back to us.

The damage to the 747 is extensive.

From the outside, the crew realizes that their windshield

has been deeply scratched.

They see bare metal showing through where the paint has

somehow been stripped away, and they still have no idea

why any of this happened.

We went back the next day to look at it in daylight.

The airplane had lost its sheen, and in some places,

it had been sandblasted quite well

and all the decals and the paint had come off.

Really, it was very little to see,

until they strip the engines down.

The engines were manufactured by Rolls-Royce.

Their investigation is led by a former Rolls-Royce

engineer, Malcolm Grayburn.

We did do a forensic analysis of the engines,

and we did record it all in terms

of photographic analysis, and also we did

a lot of laboratory analysis.

Grayburn discovers the engines

were choked with fine dust, pieces of rock, and sand.

When it was closely studied, they learned that the debris

was clearly volcanic ash.

Days after their harrowing flight, the passengers

and crew learned that the night they were flying,

there had been a major eruption at the Mount Galunggung volcano,

located just 100 miles southeast of Jakarta.

Tom Casadevall is director of the US Geological Survey

and has studied the Galunggung volcano.

Indonesia is the world's most volcanically active country.

It has more than 130 historically active

volcanoes-- meaning volcanoes which

have erupted in the last several thousand years.

Galunggung erupted explosively early in the 1980s.

In April, May, June of 1982, the eruptions became

increasingly more powerful.

The eruptions were large,

and the damage on the ground was extensive.

More than 60,000 people were evacuated from the area

around the mountain.

The night Flight 9 flew nearby, the volcano erupted again.

As the ash cloud rose more than 49,000 feet into the night,

winds pushed it to the southwest,

right into the path of British Airways Flight 9.

Never before had a volcanic cloud seriously

affected an airplane.

Could the ash have crippled this flight?

Roger, declare an emergency.

Mayday, mayday, mayday.

Speed Bird 9, we have lost all four engines.

Unlike ash that you might see in a chimney

or after a fire in a forest, this

is not soft material at all.

This is very fine, ground-up particles

of solid rock and minerals.

This material is very, very abrasive.

It's very angular in shape.

If you were to see it under a microscope,

you would see very sharp angles,

and so that's what caused the abrasion.

In addition to sandblasting the windshield

and all the leading edges of the plane,

could the ash cloud explain all the other strange phenomena

the passengers and crew had experienced?

Remember, the aircraft is moving

in close to 500 miles per hour as it's

flying into that cloud.

Even though it's a very fine material,

it can still cause abrasion and friction

on the skin of the aircraft.

Because it's such a dry environment up there,

that frictional electrification produces the glow that we

refer to as St. Elmo's Fire.

The electrification also

caused the interference in communication

experienced by the crew.

Speed Bird 9, you have

lost number four engine?

Some of the volcanic ash that was sucked in

and ground up by the engines was also blown into the plane,

and when passengers and crew saw it

swirling through the cabin, they feared the worst.

You're a passenger. You're looking out the window.

Suddenly, you start breathing this sulfurous,

sulfur-laden air in the cabin, and it probably is a choking--

probably a shocking sensation.

It's essentially a house of horrors-type situation.

While the volcanic ash

caused the visible scarring, filled the plane with smoke,

and fouled communications, did it also cause the engines

to flame out as well?

An x-ray from front to back of the engine--

A turbofan jet engine works by sucking in

enormous amounts of air.

The air is then highly pressurized by

the engine's compressor.

This tightly packed air is mixed with fuel and ignited.

The force of this reaction propels

the jet through the sky.

The temperatures in the combustion chamber where

this ash is flowing through are around 2,000 degrees

centigrade, and so the volcanic ash we know

melts at about 1,300, 1,400 degrees.

But when the liquid ash

reached deeper into the engine,

it cooled slightly, turning it into a sticky molten goo.

It attached itself to the engine and began choking it.

We've got a fundamental disturbance of the airflow

in the main core of the engine, which caused the engine

to backfire, and the engines flamed out,

and that was the cause of the problem.

Backfires occur when the engine

isn't burning cleanly.

The engine's on fire!

There's too much fuel and not enough oxygen.

Engine failure, number four.

Fire action, number four.

Checklist, powering gear.

Set.

On Flight 9, the backfires were the cause

of the enormous jets of flame many passengers

saw behind the engines.

After struggling against the choking effects

of the ash cloud, the engines on board the 747 flamed out.

What Grayburn found next was that a remarkable piece

of chemistry saved the plane.

As soon as you came out of the volcanic ash

and the engines were not running,

remember, so everything cooled down,

it was enough of this stuff to break off and allow

the engines to restart.

When enough of the molten ash was gone,

the engines were clear again, and

Townley-Freeman's frantic efforts to restart them

paid off.

Engine four, back online.

We have learned quite a bit, and we've

incorporated this learning into pilot training.

Pilots now, for example, know what

signs to look for when they might be in an ash cloud,

and those signs include the odor of sulfur

in the cabin, dust accumulating in the cabin.

And if you're at night, you might look out and see

the frictional electrification or the St. Elmo's Fire

on the leading edges of the aircraft.

Another important lesson learned from Flight 9

is that volcanic ash clouds do not appear

on normal weather radar, which reflects water.

Since the clouds are dry, they're

all but invisible to radar.

That knowledge has led to better communications

between the geologists that study volcanoes

and the international airlines that fly over them.

The crew of Flight 9

was showered with awards and commendations

in the months after their incredible night.

I thought the airmanship displayed by this crew

during this event was absolutely fantastic.

The way that they managed to guide this aircraft back down

to a safe landing after having been

through such extreme circumstances--

it was fantastic the way they recovered this aircraft.

Absolutely brilliant.

For everyone on board Flight 9,

the terrifying plunge through the skies

had a lasting impact.

Betty Tootell was so struck by the events of that night

that she wrote a book about the ordeal.

Charles Capewell and his two sons

made it home two days after they touched down in Jakarta.

25 years later, both Chas and Stephen still live in Perth.

Our time hadn't come, and that was it.

From then on, I took a different view of life.

When your time comes, there's nothing you can do,

but you can still hope.

And we hoped, and we got out of it.

Not long after the fateful flight,

Captain Eric Moody created the Galunggung Gliding Club.

Every member of the crew and all passengers

were automatically admitted to this exclusive group.

The survivors of British Airways Flight 9

happily stay in touch to this day.