‘Shuddering… then silence as plane came down without any engines’: Survivor of one of UK’s worst air disasters recalls moment flight plunged onto M1 killing 47 people

An amputee who survived one of Britain’s worst air tragedies has recalled the moment he ‘knew we were definitely going to fall’ before 47 people died in the tragedy.

A British Midland Boeing 737 crashed into an M1 embankment at the Kegworth air disaster in Leicestershire following engine failure on the night of 8 January 1989.

Alice O’Hagan, a mother of five from County Antrim, was among the passengers trapped between broken seats that swung forward on impact.

Mrs O’Hagan, who was traveling with her husband Eamon, was unable to save herself and suffered such serious leg injuries that her foot was later amputated above the ankle.

In the new documentary ‘Kegworth: Flight to Disaster’, he is among the survivors who give a candid account of the horrific scenes before and after the crash.

In the programme, which will be broadcast on BBC Two next Thursday, she explains that they were near the front of the plane, with her in the 2F window seat and her husband next to her in 2E.

Describing how the plane started to ‘shake’ and it got worse, Ms O’Hagan said: ‘You just imagine, God, I’m here, there’s no getting off. Eamon took my hand and said ‘We’ll be fine darling, nothing will happen’ which was a big lie.’

It continues: ‘The noise stopped and then there was complete and utter silence. The plane was landing without an engine. ‘I was looking outside and then I could see the lights and that’s when I knew we were definitely going to crash.’

Alice O’Hagan and her husband Eamon were among the surviving passengers on board

British Midland Boeing 737 bound for Belfast crashed into the embankment of the M1 in 1989.

Front page of the Daily Mail on 9 January 1989 – the day after the Keyworth air disaster

‘You could see all the people bent over, obviously unconscious. I remember touching the side of the cabin wall and it was really hot. Then I thought about fire.’

Flight BD092 was traveling from London Heathrow to Belfast just after 20:00 with 126 people on board when it experienced a problem with one of the engines.

The plane was diverted to East Midlands Airport and was within sight of the runway, but crashed on the motorway after the pilots accidentally turned off the wrong engine.

Miss O’Hagan’s feet got stuck. He adds: ‘I remember pushing the seat forward and my ankles started to slide out and I could see they were pretty messed up.’

She says her husband eventually tried to help her by ‘tearing his shirt because he was going to tie my ankles’, but he couldn’t do it because his arm was broken.

Miss O’Hagan’s ankle bones were severed, one had her heel bones broken and all her toes were broken; one doctor said his feet felt ‘like a bag of broken chips’.

He adds: ‘They did the best they could, we had to go to the operating theater every day and they did a little more work, a little more work. So you were coming up and then you were coming out of the anesthesia and the pain was hitting you.’

‘We couldn’t make my right leg easier to walk and the pain levels were too high so they decided I’d be better off [being] an amputee.”

The plane somehow managed to avoid hitting any vehicles and no one was injured en route; However, 47 people on board died and 74 people were injured, most seriously.

In the programme, rescuers, including Barrie Brigham, who was traveling on the M1 in a minibus with colleagues from the Royal National Lifeboat Institute and spotted the plane from afar, talk about the chaos that followed.

Barrie Brigham was in a van on the M1 with RNLI colleagues when they spotted the plane

Firefighters at the scene after a British Midland plane crashed into an embankment in 1989

Jeremy Noon was one of the rescuers working for Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service

The plane somehow managed to avoid hitting any vehicles and no one was injured on M1

Mr Brigham, who was with lifeboat mates Rob Dawson, Des Simmons and Ken Fowler at the time, recalls in the documentary: ‘The whole set was like a flood.

‘I turned to Rob and said, ‘Where’s all this water coming from?’ I said. He said: “This isn’t water, can’t you smell it? It’s aviation fuel.”

The plane took off normally just before 8 p.m., but mid-flight it began shaking and passengers heard what some described as popping noises or explosions.

Smoke and a burning smell began to fill the cabin, so the pilots shut down one of the plane’s two engines and diverted for an emergency landing in the East Midlands.

However, before reaching the safety of the runway, the plane crashed into an embankment on the side of the highway at around 20.25.

Despite extensive damage to the aircraft, rescue teams found survivors; Some of them were terrified that fire would engulf the crash site while they waited for help.

Ambulance worker Pat Withers, who was one of the first responders to the scene, said: ‘When we arrived at the scene it was horrific. When we got up I could see a broken plane on the embankment. I remember standing on the wing and putting my head in.

‘It was so quiet there was no one screaming or shouting; It was eerily quiet. There was no hysteria and that made me sad. You’ve just started doing your job.”

Jeremy Noon, who worked for Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service at the time and was also involved in the rescue effort, added: ‘I noticed a door was open where the wing was and went towards it.

‘It was pitch dark inside and there was a passenger and he stood up in front of me and made me jump. It was quiet, no one cried or anything. It was very strange.”

A number of safety improvements have been made by the airline industry as a result of the lessons learned from the disaster, including better communication between the cockpit and cabin and a greater focus on preparing passengers for emergencies.

The plane had a problem with one of its engines while en route from London to Belfast.

A crane on the M1 motorway as debris is cleared following the crash in January 1989

Members of the public place flowers at a memorial near St Andrew’s Church Kegworth in 2019

Marked the 30th anniversary of the crash with a ceremony at St Andrew’s Church Kegworth in 2019

Captain Kevin Hunt and his co-pilot David McClelland had accidentally shut down the right engine, which was working properly, after loud noises were heard from the left engine.

When the commander broadcast to the cabin that this action had been taken, passengers and cabin crew did not alert him to the error, although some of them could see the original fault in the left engine.

A report by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch found that passengers were unlikely to feel they could contribute to the pilot’s understanding of the situation, while cabin crew would be concerned that any intrusion into the flight deck during busy periods could be distracting.

Following the accident, airlines around the world began providing Cockpit Resource Management training to their employees.

This teaches that more information needs to be shared between pilots in the cockpit, while cabin crew need to have the confidence to challenge the flight crew if they believe a mistake has been made.

Nottingham surgeon Professor Angus Wallace examined the phenomenon and found that many people did not adopt the support position, causing their feet to jut forward under the front seat.

Mr Wallace developed the support position adopted by UK airlines.

Airlines are now paying more attention to encouraging passengers to take such actions, including the use of illustrated safety briefing cards on the back of each seat.

The two pilots survived, but investigators said they were not given proper training on the recently redesigned cockpit indicators, particularly vibration indicators.

Some Kegworth residents who took part in the rescue also praised them for managing the flight over their village.

However, the investigation found that the responses were hasty and ill-considered, and both were rejected by British Midland.

The new documentary was first broadcast on BBC One Northern Ireland on January 8, but is now also being shown on national BBC television for the first time on April 2.

‘Kegworth: Flight to Disaster’ airs on BBC Two on April 2 at 9pm