Flight attendant recounts 'dire' volcanic ash scare

"I just stepped up and thought 'this is it, we're going down'."

Claire O'Donnell from Basingstoke, Hampshire, still remembers the "dire situation" she and hundreds of passengers and staff found themselves in during a British Airways (BA) flight from Kuala Lumpur in June 1982.

She was a flight attendant - then known as a hostess - on the flight that Captain Eric Moody managed to land after getting caught in a cloud of volcanic ash.

More than four decades later, she said she still could not believe she managed to remain calm as she continued to help the passengers on board.

O'Donnell spoke to the BBC about her memories after Moody's wife and daughter paid tribute to his lasting legacy. His expert handling of the incident is still studied by trainee pilots today. He died in 2024.

The flight had been going smoothly until the Boeing 747 flew into ash from the erupting Mount Galunggung in Indonesia.

Moody managed to make an announcement saying the crew were "doing our damnedest" to restart the plane engines, all four of which had stopped.

"Nothing was working, everything went out, the lights went out, communication went out, it was a nighttime flight", says O'Donnell, who joined BA when she was 20 in 1978 after growing up on a Devon farm.

"We were given a signal to go to our stations by the emergency exits and the doors where we have a phone, and there's signal that goes off."

She said the plane had been "going down sort of steeply for a few moments", adding: "It was incredibly obvious that we were in a dire situation."

Despite that, O'Donnell remembers that the passengers, who were predominantly from Australia and New Zealand, were "extremely cool".

"We were only half full. I was down the back in economy where we had a pretty good view of the engines," she said.

"We felt like we were going down but it also felt like we were on fire because the engines kept having these massive flames coming out of them, where Eric was continually trying to reignite the engines."

Fine ash that resembled smoke surrounded the cabin and O'Donnell said they "just went into automatic mode".

"You just look at the passengers and try to help everybody and put the masks on and get a portable on ourselves," she said.

"I remember seeing a baby, making sure that one had a little mask on."

Moody managed to save the day by restarting the failing engines and landing safely in Jakarta after navigating around the volcano.

This came after 13 minutes of gliding without power, with a sandblasted windscreen, in the middle of the night.

But in the meantime, asked what was going through her mind during those moments, O'Donnell said: "This is it, we're going down.

"I really, really thought that was the end.

"Looking back on it, the more I think about it, the more I can't believe how calm I was."

Another memory lodged in her mind was her knees knocking as she walked up and down the aisle.

"I remember them knocking and just smiling at people and making sure they had the oxygen masks on and reassuring, and that was it, really," she said.

"They clapped so loud when we landed and that was lovely - and they cheered."

Researchers of the long-term effects that the crisis left on those onboard have praised Moody for his stoicism and competency, as well as the bravery of the rest of the crew.