Hero British Airways pilot who saved hundreds of lives dies aged 84

• Eric Moody saved the lives of 263 people in 1982 and entered aviation folklore

A hero British Airways pilot who saved hundreds of people from certain death after a jet was crippled by a cloud of volcanic dust has died, aged 84. 

Captain Eric Moody died peacefully in his sleep at his home in the UK this week. 

He was responsible for famously saving the lives of 263 people when in June 1982 all four engines of a Boeing 747 he was piloting stopped mid-air when it flew through an ash plume over Jakata, Indonesia.

Captain Moody’s made an announcement to the passengers that has since been described as ‘a masterpiece of understatement’.

He 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.’

Incredibly, after 12 minutes with no power the aircraft exited the ash cloud and all engines were restarted, allowing the aircraft to land safely.

Captain Moody told The Times in 2010 that it was ‘a bit like negotiating one’s way up a badger’s arse’ 

Heartfelt tributes have flooded social media since the announcement of his death, describing Captain Moody as a legend.  

Captain Moody entered aviation folklore for his heroics and calm demeanour when disaster struck during Flight 009. 

A TV documentary investigated the so-called ‘Jakarta Incident’.

Incredibly, passengers and crew reacted to the captain’s cataclysmic announcement not with screams and hysteria, but with an extraordinary calm as the realisation that they were almost certainly sinking to their deaths hit home.

Looking out of the aircraft windows, they could see that their plane was coated in an eerie white light and that the engines were on fire, with great jets of flame trailing into the sky.

The cabin was now filled with a thick, sulphuric smoke, and the mighty jet bucked up and down as if it were a piece of flotsam adrift on stormy seas.

Mothers moved to comfort their children, husbands reached for their wives’ hands, and air hostesses worked their way down the cabin, teaming solo passengers with a companion to accompany them into the darkest of nights.

Hours before, the BA scheduled flight had taken off from Heathrow Airport. After the long check-in, the 263 passengers settled into their seats, ordered drinks from the cabin crew, and prepared for the flight which would take them to New Zealand via India, Malaysia and Australia.

On the flight deck, the crew were fresh and alert. They had taken control at the last stopover in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Captain Moody had had his first taste of flying at the age of 16, when he took a gliding lesson. He was one of the first pilots ever trained on the Boeing 747. First officer Roger Greaves had been a co-pilot for more than six years, and Barry Townley-Freeman was flight engineer. 

As the jet flew over the Indonesian city of Jakarta, it was cruising at more than 36,000ft and had been in the air for an hour-and-a-half. Expecting an easy flight, Captain Moody checked his weather radar, which showed smooth sailing for the next 300 miles.

Assured that all was well, he asked Greaves to take charge while he took a break and stretched his legs.

In the cabin, chief steward Graham Skinner had observed excessive smoke in the air. Back in 1982, it was still legal to smoke on jets, and he was concerned it may have been a smouldering cigarette.

In the cockpit, the flight took an unsettling turn. First Officer Greaves said: ‘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.’

His engineer, Townley-Freeman, asked whether it could be St Elmo’s Fire – a natural phenomenon sometimes seen when planes fly through highly charged electric thunderclouds. The only thing was, there were no thunderclouds that night. The radar showed a clear sky.

Alarmed by this turn of events, the two men were further disturbed to see, with the help of their landing lights, a thin layer of cloud surrounding their plane.

Back in the cabin, a shudder of turbulence shook passengers as they slept. Breaking off from her book, Betty Tootell glanced to her left, where she had a clear view of the port wing. ‘To my surprise, it was covered in a brilliant, shimmering light,’ she recalls.

‘I carried on reading, but I found that I kept reading the same paragraph over and over. I then noticed that thick smoke was pouring into the cabin through the vents above the windows. I didn’t know what was happening.’

Neither did the crew. They decided it was time to call their captain back to the controls. ‘The smoke filling the plane smelt like a sulphuric, electrical smell,’ recalls Moody. ‘I went on the flight deck expecting to hear that we had some electrical smoke from the aircraft.’

Suddenly, Greaves said: ‘Oh my Lord. Look at engine four! It’s lit up somehow.’ The captain was distracted, however: he had just noticed that the engine on his side was illuminated.

Ahead of them, they appeared to be flying into a sheet of brilliant white light, and the temperature within the aircraft began to soar.

Most of the passengers now realised that this was no regular flight. Charles Capewell told his young sons to close the blind on his porthole, and affected an air of calm as his blood ran cold. 

As the fire engulfed the engines, one of them revved loudly and failed. Recalling the drill he was taught as a young pilot, Captain Moody began to shut it down. Next, engine two failed. Then the unthinkable happened. The engineer delivered the death knell: all four engines had failed.

In the cabin, the most ominous sound of all filled the air: a rumbling, grating noise almost like a cement mixer, followed by total silence. Flight 009 had entered that nameless void. It was falling from the sky.

Passenger Charles Capewell says: ‘The quietness was unbelievable. It seemed eerie and surreal, as if we were suspended in space. All we could feel was this quietness and the whimpering from the few people who were really upset.’

So what passes through the human mind as you stare death in the face? The passengers of Flight 009 offer a unique glimpse.

Tootell, who has written a book, All Four Engines Have Failed, on passengers’ response to their neardeath experiences, recalls: ‘The atmosphere in the cabin was very tense and very quiet. At first, it was raw fear and disbelief, and then after a while it turned to acceptance. We knew we were going to die.’

In the cockpit, the crew fought to control the giant glider that the 747 had become. Greaves radioed a Mayday warning to Jakarta control. Initially, they failed to understand the message – seemingly unable to comprehend such a catastrophe.

He repeated the warning, in the international format drilled into every flight crew: ‘Mayday, Mayday. Jakarta control. Speedbird nine. We have lost all four engines. Repeat, all four engines. Now descending through flight level 3-5-0.’

Even without its engines, a 747 can travel forward ten miles for every 1,000ft it falls in altitude. With no power, flight 009 had begun a long, excruciatingly slow fall. The crew realised they had less than half an hour before they hit the sea.

Moody says: ‘When all engines stop, you go into automatic mode. Obviously, we had practised this on the simulator many, many times.’

He began the standard engine restart drill, and decided to turn the crippled craft back towards the closest airport, just outside Jakarta – but a quick calculation told him that they would not make it without at least one functioning engine. As pressure within the cabin fell, oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling – an automatic emergency measure to make up for the lack of air. But some did not work.

Moody took drastic action: to prevent his passengers dying of oxygen starvation, he went into a nosedive, dropping 6,000ft in one minute, to an altitude where there was enough oxygen in the outside atmosphere to fill the cabin once more.

And quite unexpectedly, this action almost certainly saved the lives of every person on board.

Suddenly, engine four roared back into life. As the plane fell past 13,000ft, another engine came back into action, followed by the other two. The crew were euphoric, though when one of the four engines failed again, their fears continued.

With three engines operational, the plane closed in on the airport. But its problems were far from over.

Moody could see nothing outside – the windshield glass had been damaged. Landing equipment on the ground which could help them was not working, and the crew had to land the plane manually. With consummate skill, the pilot guided the aircraft to a perfect landing. ‘The airplane seemed to kiss the earth,’ recalls Moody. ‘It was beautiful.’

Safely on the ground, passengers hugged each other and applauded the crew.

Captain Moody received the Queen’s Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air.