#c1 reading

On the night of June 24, 1982, British Airways Flight 9 was cruising at 37,000 feet over the Indian Ocean when something impossible began happening. All four engines of the Boeing 747 failed. One after another, until the aircraft was completely silent.

There were 263 people on board.

Captain Eric Moody picked up the intercom. His announcement to passengers has since become one of the most understated moments in aviation history. "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 going again. I trust you are not in too much distress."

What he did not say was that nobody in the history of commercial aviation had ever successfully restarted four failed engines on a 747. Or that the aircraft was now a very large, very heavy glider descending silently through the dark toward the ocean.

The crew worked methodically through every procedure available to them. In the cockpit, St. Elmo's fire flickered across the windscreen in ghostly patterns. The engines had ingested a dense cloud of volcanic ash from Mount Galunggung in Indonesia, invisible on radar, which had coated and solidified across the turbine blades, causing all four to flame out simultaneously.

As the aircraft descended into slightly warmer, denser air at lower altitude, the ash began to clear. One engine restarted. Then a second. Then a third. The fourth came back shortly after. Moody was able to divert to Jakarta, where he landed safely despite a windscreen so badly abraded by ash particles that visibility was almost zero.

All 263 passengers and crew survived without serious injury.

The incident fundamentally changed how aviation authorities worldwide monitored and communicated volcanic ash clouds to aircraft, a safety legacy that continues to protect flights today.

A B-52 'stratofortress' bomber has crashed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, USA. Eight presumed dead in routine test accident. (15.06.2026)