Passengers and crew aboard a British Airways jumbo jet that plunged 30,000ft after being hijacked by a mentally ill passenger have spoken of being terrified and hearing “grown men crying”.
With 400 passengers on board, BA Flight 2069 left Gatwick for Nairobi on 29 December 2000.
Six hours later, I was flying at 35,000 feet over Sudan when A mentally unstable passenger, a Kenyan named Paul Mukonyi, broke into the cockpit and took over the controls.
Financier and environmentalist Ben Goldsmith was on the flight with his mother, Lady Annabel Goldsmith, his sister Jemima Khan and their two children, aged one and four at the time.
Speaking on a new Channel 5 In the documentary Terror at 30,000 feet, which airs tonight, Ben revealed how he told his mother “we’re going to die”, before his sister Jemima told passengers to stop crying and led a recital of the Lord’s Prayer.
Ben recalled the “noise of grown men screaming” as they fell to the ground and his sister asking the plane to pray with her.
‘My sister was holding the eldest of her two children and shouted, “Everyone stop shouting, I have a child with me, please pray.”
‘Immediately, she led us and we prayed the Lord’s Prayer. I stopped the prayer and said to my mother: “Mom, we are going to die now.”
Financier and environmentalist Ben Goldsmith, who was on the flight with his mother Lady Annabel Goldsmith, his journalist sister Jemima and her son, spoke about his experience on the Boeing 747 to Nairobi on 29 December 2000 in the Channel 5 documentary Terror at 30,000 feet.
British pop singer Bryan Ferry (left) watched as British Airways flight crew prepared to remove Kenyan hijacker Paul Kefa Mukonyi, 27, from his Kenya-bound flight.
Passengers screamed in terror as the Boeing took a steep dive, leaving the plane almost vertical.
Oxygen masks fell from their hatches as bags flew across the cabins and unbuckled passengers banged their heads on the seatbacks.
Ben recalled: ‘The noise of grown men screaming, I’d never heard that noise before.
“The noise of 700 people screaming at the top of their lungs inside a small cylindrical tube is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”
As Captain Bill Hagan and co-pilot Phil Watson battled the hijacker for control of the plane, it went into a spin and then a downward spiral.
“The silence on that crash was deafening as everyone tried to catch their breath and hold on. All you could hear was the whistling of the wind as the plane went down,” Ben added.
Cabin crew member Kim Parker, the most seriously injured person on the flight, also recalled the horror of that day.
She said: ‘The plane just flipped over and I was on the roof and when I fell, the impact with the floor broke my legs immediately. I actually heard them break.
“All I could see was the ground and I thought this must be how people feel in plane crashes.
The hijacker of a British Airways jumbo jet bound for Kenya, Paul Kefa Mukonyi, 27, sits with his hands tied on the plane.
Cabin crew member Kim Parker, who was the most seriously injured person on the flight, also recalled the horror of that day.
‘When he flipped onto his side, I remember coming off the ground, but I don’t remember landing because I had obviously passed out at that point, and that’s when I obviously fractured my back vertebra.
“I woke up and I couldn’t get up off the ground, but I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get up off the ground, but it had to do with the G-force.”
Captain Hagan, who had left his co-pilot Phil alone in the cockpit while he took a nap in his cabin, first noticed something was wrong when the plane began to climb, awakening him from his sleep.
He said: ‘When I got back into the cockpit, I saw a terrorist, he was holding onto the controls and we were still in a very steep climb. I had to get him off the controls, that was the only thing on my mind.
‘I hit him with my first two or three shots to the temple, that didn’t do anything, he was wearing a police jacket and I pulled on it but it just slipped away.
‘Then I reached into his armpits and pulled him off the control panel, but what I didn’t realise was that he was still holding onto the controls, so I let go for a minute and when I did we went under.’
Hero Captain Bill Hagan managed to wrestle to the ground a mentally challenged passenger who had taken control of the joystick.
As the captain and co-pilot Phil Watson battled the hijacker for control of the plane, it went into a spin and then a downward spiral.
The captain, whose wife and children were also on the flight, said he felt “ashamed” for not being able to stop the terrorist and thought everyone was going to die.
He said: “I was frustrated, I couldn’t do it and it was up to me. Then inspiration hit me, I’ve got my family on board, this guy was trying to kill my wife and kids, I got angry and I stuck my finger in his eye as hard and as high as I could.”
In the struggle, the intruder bit one of the pilot’s fingers, but Captain Hagan managed to get him out of the cockpit and take him to the club class cabin.
Three passengers, including Jon Keens, ran to help and pulled the man to the ground.
Cabin crew member Collette Manning said they had to strap him into one of the passenger seats to secure him.
Watson, the co-pilot, who had been sitting at the controls throughout the flight, pulled the plane out of its dive and ended the two-minute crisis that occurred shortly before 5 a.m.
Ben said: ‘A voice came over the loudspeaker, and it was the captain, and he said, ‘we’re okay, we’ve had a terrible scare, some crazy guy has just tried to crash the plane and kill us all, but we’re okay, we’re safe.’
Goldsmith said he lit a cigarette along with other passengers, despite smoking being banned on flights and cabin crew having begun handing out measures of alcohol.
Ben was travelling to Kenya with his mother, widow of businessman Sir James, his sister Jemima and their sons, Kasim, 18 months, and Sulaiman, four at the time, for a two-week holiday.
Also on board were singer Bryan Ferry and his wife Lucy Helmore, en route to Zanzibar for a family holiday.
The intruder was arrested when the flight arrived in Nairobi. Police described the 27-year-old Kenyan as suspected of having a mental illness.
Terror at 30,000 feet. Fridays at 9pm on Channel 5