Eric Moody, British Airways pilot who kept his cool when an ash cloud cut all four engines – obituary
Eric Moody, who has died aged 82, successfully extricated a British Airways Boeing 747 from the jaws of disaster in 1982. The outstanding performance of Moody and his crew – whose “airmanship”, he insisted, had saved the day – made headlines, and the incident had a lasting impact on airline safety in relation to the phenomena of volcanic ash and its effects.
On the night of June 24 1982, British Airways flight 009 from London to Auckland made one of its en route stops in Kuala Lumpur. From there, Moody and his crew departed for the next stop: Perth in Western Australia.
Over central Java, with a clear picture on the cockpit weather radar, the Boeing 747 – named City of Edinburgh – was spectacularly enveloped by charged aerial particles of lightning known as St Elmo’s fire. Then a curious white smoke began to fill the cabin.
When Moody rushed back to the cockpit after a break, to be confronted with the unfolding drama and unreliable speed gauges, he thought he had an electrical problem. Then number four engine failed, quickly followed by the other three of the Rolls-Royce RB211 engines.
With the assistance of senior first officer Roger Greaves and senior engineering officer Barry Townley-Freeman, Moody tried all known remedies and then improvised. “I threw the rule book away and began to try different things,” he recalled. “If I had not I would not be here.”
Unwittingly the 747 had flown into the volcanic ash plume of an erupting Mount Galunggung.
A Mayday distress call was issued into the night and as the 747 fell from 37,000ft, Moody made his cabin announcement: “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.”
He then requested the senior cabin crew member to report to the cockpit. These were the code words to signal to cabin crew an imminent risk of disaster.
Cabin manager Graham Skinner and his team attended to the passengers, who did not descend into panic, despite seeing flames outside and smoke inside.
Moody descended fast to better air then put the 747 into slower descent and reckoned they had 20 minutes of powerless flight before the very real possibility of ditching the 747 in the Indian Ocean at night.
The crew, who had no idea about the ash cloud, made over 20 attempts to re-start the engines, but to no avail. After turning off their intended course, after a 13-minute glide down to nearly 12,000ft, one engine finally relit. Moody had been preparing to ditch, but suddenly the 747 was “just about flying” on one engine.
Soon the other engines came back on, only for one to fail violently again and the others to behave erratically. But Moody knew he could now cross the Javanese mountains and make an emergency landing at Jakarta.
Only on final descent did the crew realise that their view through the windscreens had been rendered opaque by the sandblasting effect of the ash. With just a two-inch strip of visibility at the edge of his windscreen, Moody perched in his seat, told his crew that they were not going to die today, and guided the airliner to a faultless landing despite recalcitrant engines and there being no runway instrument-landing system.
The flight engineer knelt at the bottom of the steps and kissed the ground. When Moody asked why, and the engineer replied that “The Pope does it,” to which Moody responded: “He flies Alitalia.”
Moody and his cabin manager Skinner were awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air; Moody also received the Honourable Compay of Air Pilots’ Hugh Gordon-Burge Award, given to a member of crew whose outstanding behaviour and action contributed to the saving of their aircraft or passengers.
Eric Henry John Moody was born on June 7 1941 in Hampshire. He grew up close to the New Forest and attended the Peter Symonds grammar school in Winchester.
He was fascinated by aircraft from an early age and aged seven, after his father had taken him to see the last of the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) flying boats at Southampton, he had set his heart on being a pilot. Moody joined the RAF cadets and learned to fly a glider before he could legally drive a car.
He secured entry to the BOAC pilot training college at nearby Hamble but he was accepted only after having his nose straightened – to meet safety mask requirements. In his resultant career at BOAC/British Airways he amassed over 17,000 flying hours across 32 years, notably on the VC10 and the 747, and was the embodiment of professionalism and sang froid.
He was a member of the legal committee of the British Airline Pilots’ Association.
He retired in 1996 and flew privately in a Piper Navajo. He also toured as a much-admired public speaker and was particularly concerned about “keyboard” computerised piloting, urging young pilots to study airmanship.
Latterly resident at Chilworth, he was a dedicated Southampton Football Club fan and season ticket holder.
In 1966 he married Patricia Collard, with whom he had a daughter, Sarah, and a son, Iain, also an airline pilot.
Eric Moody, born June 7 1941, died March 18 2024
