Eric Moody: The pilot who landed a jumbo jet amid cloud of volcanic ash

When British Airways flight 9 took off from Kuala Lumpur in June 1982, the pilot and passengers were unaware they were about to become part of history.

The journey to Australia seemed to be going well – until the Boeing 747 hit a cloud of ash from the erupting volcano Mount Galunggung in Indonesia.

During the flight, Captain Eric Moody, from Totton in Hampshire, made this 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.”

Keeping his cool, Moody managed to restart the failing engines and landed safely after navigating around the volcano – following 13 minutes of gliding without power, with a sandblasted windscreen, in the middle of the night.

But his story did not stop there. He made a significant impact on aviation history all the way up until his death in 2024, with his expert handling of the incident studied by training pilots across the world.

Forty-four years on, Pat Moody, Eric’s wife of 58 years, recalled the moment she found out about his miraculous landing.

“We were at home and the telephone rang. It was British Airways (BA) to say there’d been an emergency landing into Jakarta in Indonesia – but I wasn’t too worried, because there were no injuries.

“And then a little while later, Eric rang me to say that they had had a bit of a whoopsie, but they were all safe.

“The hard bit on that was, although I spoke to him a lot, this happened on a Thursday, and he didn’t actually come home until the following Tuesday.

“I had an 11-year-old daughter who I told ‘yes I know, daddy’s fine. I’ve spoken to him but I won’t believe it till I actually see him’. So she was literally counting the minutes.”