How One Number Almost Crashed A Jumbo Jet | British Airways Flight 029

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747 Image: Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland - British Airways Boeing 747-100; G-BDPV@LHR;04.04.1997
This is the story of british airways flight 029. A while back i made a video about a a british Airways 747, one that flew through a forest and survived. Now if you haven't seen that video i highly recommend that you do as its an incredible story. In that video I made a brief mention of another incident which I dubbed the Nairobi incident. So this winter this incredible story is brought to you by the same people that brought you that incredible story. Starring the 747-100!
On the 2nd of september 1974 flight 029 was on its way from zurich to nairobi, the plane departed nairobi at 9:pm and they expected to reach nairobi at about 5 am in the morning. As they cruised high above the African continent the captain in the left hand seat was the one piloting the plane and the first officer manned the radios. The flight engineer calculated away in the cockpit as they stayed at 33,000 feet. Thats how most of the flight went, hour after hour of nothingness as they cut through the darkness. Two and a half hours before landing they were asked to climb to 37000 feet. When they were about 150 NM away from the airport the pilots started to go through the approach procedures and other checklists for nairobi international.
They also went over the diversion airports that would be available for them. The captain expected to be cleared to runway 06 which was ILS equipped and so he decided to use the ILS system to get close to the runway and then fly the plane down manually once the runway was sighted. All in all it was a solid plan and a simple one at that.
Shortly after this the pilots were in contact with the nairobi radio controller and he cleared them down to 15,000 feet and towards a beacon called golf golf and just as the captain had predicted they were on track to land on runway 06, as the plane descended to 15000 feet they got a weather report from a pilot that had just landed at the airport. The cloud base was a bit low at 300 feet which might cause some problems with sighting the runway. But the pilots continued with the approach now they had to descend to 12000 feet. They were still flying towards the golf golf beacon and they were 30 nm away. The beacon was situated on the summit of mount Ngong which was visible that night. They got further instructions to descend, this time to 10,000 feet and so they closed the throttles and just let the plane lose altitude. As they leveled off the plane had reached the golf golf beacon.the controller gave them the following message. “Speed bird 029 you are passing the gof golf beacon this time descend seven five zero zero feet the QNH is 1020.5” a pretty innocent transmission and it told them what to do next.
The pilots double checked that they were indeed at the golf golf beacon both visually and using the needles in the cockpit. The co-pilot responded with “roger speed bird 029 cleared to 5000 feet on 1020.5” their acknowledgement got no response, they set the autopilot to 5000 feet and the 747 started to descend towards the altitude that they had been cleared to. The cockpit was busy at this time the captain was the one flying and the first officer was busy re-tuning some radios and the flight engineer was busy with the approach checklists.
On its way down the plane passed through some clouds and all visual references were lost as the plane was plunged into darkness. They got a warning that signaled that they were 2500 feet above the ground which was noted by the crew. The 747 slowed down even more and the controller now told them that they were 15 nm from the runway and that they could now line up with the runway. As the pilots selected the ILS frequency the 747 started to turn to the left in an attempt to lock on to the signal. The first officer said 1000 to go indicating that they were just 1000 feet above their targeted altitude. Suddenly in the cockpit the ILS deviation warning light lit up. The plane was telling them that they were way too low. The glideslope pointers were out of view, the captain's first thought was that this was a false alarm there was no way that they could be that low. The pilots thought that their ILS system had failed them. At this point the controller said that they were 8.5 nm from touch down and that they were cleared to land. As the first