a 747 is flying from kuala lumper to perth australia on a normal british airways flight in august 1982. captain eric mody goes to the washroom as they are pretty smooth during this time a weird smoke enters the plane and the pilots spot a weird light show which they think is a st elmos fire which is strange as theres no clouds in teh area. the light show is not the only thing as the no 4 engine and than all 4 engines start to have trouble and fail menaing they have to glide from 37000 feet to an airport jarkata is the nearest but its behind them and with mountains in the path they will either hit a mountain or ocean if they don’t start the engines. getting the mayday to atc isn’t easy. the crew try and restart the engines and have multiple failures and they will have to decide if to ditch or hit a mountain (bad options both of them). they choose to ditch if they can’t start the engines just before they would have to turn to the sea the engines restart which allows them to get some space from the mountains when the no 2 engine fails again after trying everything else to get the plane under control. as they near jarkata they realise theres no glideslope and the windscreen is damaged but they land safely against the odds. they find out they encountered volcaniac ash during the flight that caused the engines to fail but had loosened enough to restart.
next time a lavitory fire leads to a rush to escape a dc-9.
Harrison’s world 