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Casey Planespotting: Charlest103 Aviation Videos: 747 Picture: Richard Silagi St Elmo's Fire Picture: Public Domain Donations are never expected but are appreciated: This is the story of speedbird 9 or british airways flight 9. On the 24th of june 1982, it was a pitch black night and a british airways 747 streaked above the indonesian islands, it was on its way from kuala lumpur to perth australia, perth was just a stop over its ultimate destination was auckland in new zealand, this leg of the flight was captained by Eric moody, his team consisted of first officer Roger greaves and flight engineer barry townley freeman. The 747 had 248 passengers and 15 crew members on board. All looked good, the weather was calm, all systems were in the green and everyone looked forward to landing in Perth some 5 hours later. As they cruised at 37000 feet, tiny pin pricks of light popping up on the windscreen this was accompanied by acrid smoke coming in from the vents, Captain Moody was brought back to the flight deck. In front of them was the most intense display of St Elmo's fire that any of them had ever seen. St elmo's fire is a natural phenomenon where a little bit of plasma forms due to the ionization of air molecules. Roger the first officer looked over and saw that the number 4 engine was lit from within. At 8:42 PM Jakarta time or 1:42 pm UTC Flight engineer barry freeman called out “engine failure number 4” engine number 4 had flamed out, captain moody called for the engine fire drill and the other two pilots carried it out. About a minute later engine number two surged and failed. The flight engineer said “Engine failure number 2” which was quikcly followed up by “threes gone” which was followed up by “theyve all gone”. It took a second for the situation to sink in, the flight engineer said “four engines do not fail”, A quadruple engine failure was almost unheard of. They were out of thrust but the instruments still worked. But the instruments painted a dire picture, some of the instruments were inoperative and some were literally off the charts. An amber light told them that the engines had exceeded their maximum turbine gas temperatures. Eric said to his first officer “Ok Roger put out a mayday”, at 8:44 Pm the first officer roger transmitted “jakarta, Jakarta mayday mayday speedbird 9 we've lost all 4 engines were leaving 370” But even a simple mayday call proved to be harder than usual, Jakarta control misunderstood the mayday call, they were under the impression that engine number 4 had failed, A nearby garuda indonesia plane relayed the message to Jakarta Control and only then did they understand the severity of the situation. With no thrust they were falling and they needed to land somewhere, but in their path lay the mountains on the island of Java, they needed to be have at least 11500 feet in altitude to cross the mountain range safely, so the crew decided that, if they were not able to maintain 12000 feet by the time they got to the mountain range they'd turn around and ditch the plane in the indian ocean. With a plan in place they began their engine restart attempts, were they in the ideal situation for an engine restart? No but the engines had to start they just had to. At 26000 feet the cabin pressure warning horn sounded and the crew donned their oxygen masks. But not first officer roger, his mask fell apart in his hand, captain moody now had a tough decision to make. He could either let the plane descend very slowly and risk exposing his first officer to a lack of oxygen or he could descend and take the plane down to a more breathable altitude but that would eat into the precious little altitude that they had. They kept trying to restart
