Passengers Perspective

For those that can remember the Bahrain Bomber, I came across this story in a travel book written by Noel Barber the book is called "The Natives were Friendly". Published in paperback by Coronet 1985. First published by Macmillian London Ltd 1977, Noel was a passenger on the flight.

Here is the extract. It takes up from an interlude where he is talking about death. The notes in Italics are mine.

From page 173, the chapter is called Natural Break.

Similar inconsequential thoughts crowded my mind when I was flying by night from India in a Boeing 707 at 35,000 feet, and without warning was jolted out of my drugged sleep by an almost unbearable pressure on my chest, as though strong arms were pinioning me. I thought at first that it was a heart attack – and that did frighten me. But then as I struggled into a sitting position, a cascade of pots and pans, knives and forks, cups and saucers hurled passed me like a scene from an outrageous custard-pie comedy, and crashed against the bulkhead behind the pilots cabin.

A carrier cot, with a baby in it flew past. A parcel that had no right to be in the rack – I remember it was square with sharp corners - whizzed past me, hit a man a couple of seats ahead and blood spurted all over the place. As I fought the invisible objected sitting on my chest, my brief case (containing irreplaceable records of weeks of research) seemed to rise in front of me, as though by levitation; I tried to grab it but it swept away into the stream of objects whistling amongst the screaming passengers.

At last I realised that we were going straight down, nose first, straight down, out of control. I groped in my pocket, with only one thought in my mind. I had spent my last few thousand rupees on a gorgeous gem-studded bracelet for my Titina. (his wife) Now I realised I was going to die, and before the pressure blacked me out, I gripped the bracelet in my right-hand jacket pocket, and swore, ‘If some bastard tries to steal this from my body, he’ll have to cut off my arm.’

Seconds later – minutes? Hours? immeasurable time – the pain in my chest suddenly eased. I felt ‘free’. Dimly I heard the Aussie pilot announce, a trifle breathlessly, ‘No cause for alarm ladies and gentlemen. Sorry about the trouble, but everything’s under control now.’ It took me two minutes to unclench my hand from the bracelet in my pocket. I just could not unlock my fingers.

Apparently (though I never heard this officially) The gyroscope had slipped its moorings and we dived fifteen thousand feet – luckily over the Baluchistan desert, which did not contain any inconvenient mountains. The pilot did not dare bring the plane out of the dive too quickly in case he wrenched off a wing.

We slipped in to Bahrain at 4am. Sixty people had to receive medical treatment, and in the sandy garden outside the hot airport building, an extortionary collection of objects that had been wrenched from people by the pressure of the dive awaited collection. I found my brief case. Still bemused, I suddenly saw a shoe that looked uncommonly like one made (for me) by Mr Lobb (his shoe maker in BKK). I had not until that moment realised that a shoe had been mysteriously plucked from my foot.

I was luckier than some of the others, in particular those who perhaps gave an involuntary cry when the dive started, for among the objects waiting to be collected on the table in the garden were four sets of false teeth.

Wayne's notes:-

I was on a southbound crew that arrived into Bahrain about 12 hours later from LHR.

Most of the crew were still up grogging on, they had "saved" the f/c and y/c bars and bought them back to the hotel for "safe keeping".

If my memory serves me correctly the gyro that controlled the skippers artificial horizon went haywire. The skipper did not check the F/O’s artificial horizon but followed his own around which turned the a/c over and put it into a spinning dive. The F/O was having time-off in the crew rest, he clawed his way back onto the flight deck and saved the day. The hostie, Maureen Bushell (she was a former Bush Pilots Hostie) received a broken arm. (she was in the same training class, 101, as me.) The skipper was demoted to permanent F/O. The a/c was checked by engineers flown up from SYD (the upper surfaces of the wings had ripples in them, like corrugations, as they were bent up so far). The a/c was ferried home with a tech crew only, for repairs.