Battle for Life at 35,000 Feet

By Caroline Davies and Sean O'Neill

The Daily Telegraph - 30th December 2000

A BRITISH Airways jumbo jet, with 398 people on board, came within seconds of plummeting to earth yesterday after a deranged passenger burst into the cockpit and tried to seize the controls.

The airliner, flying from Gatwick to Nairobi, dived two miles from 35,000 feet as the crew fought with the man. They eventually overpowered the 27-year-old Kenyan with the help of passengers and tied him to a seat.

During the two-minute struggle the autopilot was disengaged, causing the Boeing 747-400 to spiral downwards. The cabin lights went out and screaming passengers were thrown against the walls and ceiling as the jet twice went into nosedives. The pilot, Capt William Hagan, 53, said afterwards over the tannoy: "A very nasty man has just tried to kill us all."

Among the terrified passengers were Jemima Khan, her children, mother and brother Benjamin Goldsmith, and the pop star Bryan Ferry and his family.

CLINGING to each other in terror, the Goldsmith family said their goodbyes, convinced that they were going to die as a passenger threw himself at the controls of their British Airways jet.

As the Boeing 747-400 plunged two miles in a matter of seconds, Benjamin, son of the late Sir James Goldsmith, gripped the hand of his mother, Lady Annabel Goldsmith, and said: "We're going to die. We're going to die."

Nearby was his sister, Jemima Khan, 26, wife of the former cricketer Imran Khan. "She had her two little boys clinging round her neck and she was saying, 'Please, please, please, don't let us die. Please, please.'

"There were people hysterically crying, people being sick, shrieks coming from the back of the plane. Grown men were screaming, which was a horrific noise if you've never heard it before. I can't believe there was a single passenger on that plane who did not believe we were going to crash."

Mr Goldsmith, 20, speaking to The Telegraph from the holiday home in Kenya rented by his family, said most of the passengers were asleep, unaware that a man had burst into the cockpit.

The cabin lights were dimmed as the jet cruised at 35,000ft. Lady Annabel was travelling in the lower level club section with her son and daughter and Mrs Khan's sons, Kasim, 18 months, and Sulaiman, four. Nearby were Lady Annabel's god-daughter, Lady Cosima Somerset, and her two boys

Bryan Ferry, former lead singer of the Seventies pop group Roxy Music, was seated in the upper section, next to the cockpit with his wife Lucy and three of his sons, Isaac, Tara and Merlin. Isaac, 15, had noticed the tall, muscular Kenyan man who walked from the economy section up into the business class cabin. His attention was caught by the man's peculiar behaviour.

He said later: "He was holding a prayer book. He seemed to be delirious, talking away to himself. He walked up the aisle towards the cockpit and was hanging around the toilets." But Mr Goldsmith and the rest of the passengers below were unaware that the 27-year-old man had entered the cockpit through an unlocked door.

He threw himself at the jet's controls, knocking out the autopilot, in a desperate suicide attempt. As the struggle between the man and the crew spilled out of the cockpit and into the upper club class section, the plane dived, then lurched, then dived again as the crew wrested back control of the craft and three passengers helped to restrain the man.

Mr Goldsmith said: "All we knew was that we woke to hear these shrieks. Everyone was screaming. The plane was in a nosedive, literally. We all thought it was curtains. They managed to pull the plane out of the dive, and it lurched back up again. The engines were making shrieking noises.

"Suddenly there was a violent stall and the whole plane was shuddering. Then it went into another dive. There was silence except for the emergency alarms and the seat belt signs going on and off, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong.

"It lurched to the left, and that was it. We knew we were really low down. We saw the ground coming up at us steeply, and everything was pouring down to the front of the plane - people, luggage, everything. One of the stewardesses smashed her ankle as she fell down really roughly to the front of the plane."

Mr Goldsmith said: "My sister was sitting there with her two little boys, absolutely terrified. My mother was sitting by my side. I said to her, 'We're going to die, we're going to die. Goodbye'. We really thought this was it. The lights went out. The oxygen masks had dropped. Then the plane gave another lurch, like a rollercoaster, a kind of weightless rolling forward.

"It was pretty touch and go. But we somehow got back into the upper position and we bumped back above the clouds and evened out. The pilot came on to the tannoy, totally out of breath, and said, 'A very nasty man has just tried to kill us all, but the plane is all right now'.

"Then the lights came back on. Everyone was hugging each other. It's all a bit of a haze now. It seemed so surreal at the time. I had mentally prepared myself that I was going to die. I have never been so terrified in all my life.

"Then we were just cruising along at normal altitude. The pilot came back on and tried to explain what had happened and said a man had been trussed up and the plane had been secured.

"The crew were wonderful, so brave. They must have been as terrified as all of us, yet the stewardesses were going up and down reassuring everyone. They gave hot tea to people, and vodka. And I think a lot of people started smoking. There was the sound of a lot of heavy drags.

"The pilot came on later and said five or six seconds more and the plane would have tilted on to its back and blown up, so we were literally seconds from death. Bryan Ferry and his family were up on top, so they had a better idea of what was going on. Isaac managed to videotape some of it."

Isaac, speaking by phone from Nairobi airport, said: "The co-pilot and the pilot were involved in a struggle with the man. Then two people broke into the cockpit and dragged him out. It looked as though they had gouged his eye and they secured him with seat belts. The security staff removed him when we landed. He wasn't trying to hijack the plane, it was a suicidal attack. He wanted the plane to crash."

Bryan Ferry, 55, told reporters: "I have done a lot of plane flights in my life but this is the most eventful. I was v

ery frightened but I'm very relieved to be here on firm land." He had been asleep when the drama began. "I think we were on the third dip when I fully realised what was happening." When asked if she thought they were about to die, his wife simply said: "Yes".

The pilot, Capt William Hagan, was resting in the area towards the rear of the plane, leaving his First Officers, Phil Watson and Richard Webb, in the cockpit at the time of the incident. His wife and two young children were on board.

As the man burst through, it is understood he was first tackled by Mr Webb, and somehow in the attack the autopilot was disengaged. Alerted to the drama, the captain ran back to the cockpit to find the man wrestling with Mr Watson, who was trying to gain control of the plane.

As Capt Hagan grappled with the Kenyan, Mr Watson managed to pull the plane not once, but twice out of nose dives. During the struggle the captain received bite wounds to his ear and a finger.

Katie Laybourne, 18, a student from Kent, said: "Everyone hit the roof, it fell so quickly." Her friend, Zoe McNaughton, 19, added: "Stuff was flying around, we thought the plane was going to fall. Some people hurt their heads." Gordon Owles, who works in London but was returning to his native Kenya with his aunt for his sister's wedding, said he thought the pilot was dead and that the plane was "definitely going down".

Some passengers on the flight expressed shock that someone could gain access to the flight deck so easily. Chris Willen, who was travelling with his family for a 10-day safari holiday said: "I find it strange, quite alarming, that one passenger can get into the cockpit and do something like that." Ethel Hinga, 63, said: "It is ridiculous some lunatic can just wander into a cockpit from the passenger seats and almost kill 400 people."

Mr Goldsmith added that the whole family was now exhausted. Imran Khan arrived in Kenya after travelling separately from Lahore. Mr Goldsmith said: "He is very, very relieved we are all right. My mother is pretty exhausted and traumatised. It's hard to believe we are here on holiday when we were just seconds from death. I imagine everyone on that flight feels the same. I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it."

Later, Mrs Khan said: "It was terrifying. The plane stalled, it went down 10,000ft and then it went down again. When it lurched up again, I thought, 'Oh God, don't prolong it'. I have always been afraid of flying and, I thought, this is it, my worst nightmare, this is the death I fear most."

Last Updated: 19 July 2008