‘Cover-up': How brief stopover turned into horror ordeal for passengers on Flight 149

The Age

2 days ago

On August 1, 1990, British Airways Flight 149, scheduled to fly from London Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur via stops in Kuwait and Madras (now Chennai), was briefly delayed before take-off.
'Right at the end of the boarding period, our ground controller told me that there were additional passengers who had just checked in,' recalls Clive Earthy, the flight's cabin services director, one of 367 passengers and 18 crew on board. 'The passengers turned up and boarded the flight. They were a group of young, fit-looking men. They were all seated at the back of the aircraft.'
The Boeing 747-136 finally took off just after 6pm. As soon as they landed in Kuwait, Earthy opened a door at the front of the plane to be greeted by a British military officer in full uniform. 'He said to me: 'You're very late, Flight 149, I've come to meet some people from London and it's very important I get them off quickly now.' All those men were escorted off the aircraft. Instead of going down the arrivals channel into customs and immigration, the officer took them down some side steps and disappeared.
'I thought that was most peculiar. But I didn't put two and two together for a long, long time.'
Flight 149 never made it out of Kuwait. While the plane was in the air, unbeknown to the passengers and crew, Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces had invaded Kuwait after months of build-up on the border and were making rapid progress towards the airport. For the civilians on board, their flight into a war zone was the start of a 35-year tale of mistreatment and government cover-ups, which is the subject of a gripping and beautifully made new documentary, Flight 149: Hostage of War.
The story remains unresolved: more than 100 (at the time of writing) of the survivors are suing the British government and British Airways for knowingly putting them in harm's way.
'Personally, I don't want money,' Earthy says. 'What I do want is an apology.'
From boarding gate to battleground
While the plane waited on the tarmac in Kuwait, another passenger, 12-year-old Jennifer Chappell, heading to Madras with her brother and parents, got her first inkling that something was wrong.
'The cleaners could not get off the plane fast enough,' she recalls. 'I looked out of the window and saw fighter planes flying very low, with what I thought were things falling off them.'
Moments later, the bombs went off. Kuwaiti soldiers ordered all passengers and crew off the plane into the airport. There they watched the fighting through the large plate-glass windows of the terminal building. 'You could see the planes dogfighting and the tanks rolling over the horizon,' Chappell says. 'The crew had to tell some of the adults to stand back from the windows'.
The Iraqis seized the airport. Chappell and her family were transferred, along with several other guests, into a series of facilities where they were held prisoner as Hussein's 'honoured guests', during the build-up to the first Gulf War. Initial media reports portrayed their stay as a kind of extended holiday in the sun. The reality was much harsher. The captives were released after five months, apart from one Kuwaiti who was shot trying to escape, after a concerted campaign for their release by British and US officials as well as a surprising parade of celebrities including Edward Heath, Sir Richard Branson, Reverend Jesse Jackson and Muhammad Ali.
But during their time as 'guests', the prisoners, not just those on that flight, were variously used as human shields, kept hungry, paraded on TV and subjected to mock executions.
Possibly the most famous image of the time was of five-year-old Stuart Lockwood with Saddam Hussein. Lockwood was not on board the plane but lived in Kuwait – his father was in the oil industry.
Today Lockwood says, 'I was shielded, completely unaware of the gravity of the events unfolding around me. However, when I stood next to him, surrounded by guards, TV cameras and everyone else who were also being held as human shields, I knew instinctively that this situation was important. This surreal chapter from my early childhood remains a profound and formative part of who I am.'
Meanwhile, Jennifer Chappell says, 'I've never recovered. I was diagnosed with PTSD at 15. I've suffered with depression and anxiety my whole life, emotionally unstable personality disorder, which has led to numerous suicide attempts. I've never been able to hold anything down or settle down. I've lived my life on benefits. At 12 years old, I was a straight-A student at boarding school.'
One of them, Charlie Kristiansson – a steward on the flight – says an Iraqi soldier separated him from the other hostages and raped him.
'I feel proud to have survived,' Kristiansson says. 'We survived inhumane conditions. I saw a 10-year-old girl chased by Iraqi soldiers jump to her death. Having witnessed that, and after what happened to me personally, which was horrible, you have to recalibrate and reconfigure yourself.' He recently switched nationality to Luxembourg, part of the process of exorcising his demons from that time.
For Kristiansson and Chappell – like Earthy and the other souls aboard Flight 149 – captivity marked the beginning of a nightmare that has lasted 35 years. Throughout that time their account has been repeatedly denied by British Airways and successive governments, even as new evidence has steadily corroborated their story.
Last July it was announced that about a hundred survivors are suing British Airways and the British government, believing their civilian flight was deliberately endangered to enable a covert intelligence-gathering mission. As the infected blood and Post Office scandals have shown, such betrayals are far from history.
The controversy hinges on the extent to which British Airways and the government were aware of the rapidly developing situation on the ground in Kuwait. And if they knew about the Iraqi invasion, why was a British civilian aircraft allowed to land?
Flight 149 was the only plane to land in Kuwait in the small hours of the morning on August 2. At the time, British Airways and the government claimed not to have been aware of how fast the invasion had taken place. In a now-infamous statement in parliament on September 6, 1990, Margaret Thatcher said: 'The British Airways flight landed, its passengers disembarked, and the crew handed over to a successor crew and went to their hotels. All that took place before the invasion; the invasion was later.'
Subsequent governments repeated this claim, despite testimony from passengers and crew such as Chappell, who witnessed gunfire from the plane. It also contradicted the timeline set out in Thatcher's own memoir The Downing Street Years.
A long road to accountability
A major breakthrough came in 2021 when documents released under the 30-year rule (the period after which most government records are transferred to the National Archives and made available to the public) revealed that the Kuwaiti ambassador had rung the Foreign Office at midnight, when the plane was in the air, to warn that the invasion had begun. The information was passed on to Downing Street, MI6, the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Defence, but not British Airways. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary in 2021, apologised for the deceit.
'This failure was unacceptable,' Truss said in a written statement. 'I apologise to the House for this, and I express my deepest sympathy to those who were detained and mistreated.'
When it came to why British Airways was not informed, one scapegoat was Anthony Paice – the MI6 station chief in Kuwait, working undercover as aviation security at the embassy. He was accused of failing to warn the airline of the risks. Some reports even suggested that he and his service were complicit in the clandestine operation – a claim he denies.
'Somebody should come up with an apology … British Airways had been warned and took no notice of the warning, and the British government was also warned and also took no action.'
Anthony Paice, former MI6 station officer
'In subsequent years, there were press reports that claimed I was responsible for telling British Airways it was safe to fly through [Kuwait], where in fact I advised them exactly the opposite,' he says. 'I had to live with this because I had signed the Official Secrets Act, so my only comment could be 'no comment'.' It was only in 2019 that his 'worm turned' and he decided to tell the truth. In 2022, he published a book about his story, Overkill or Under-kill, which he says has 'never been disputed' by MI6 or any other department.
'I thought, damn it all, we're a long time after the events [of Flight 149] and I'm still being blamed for something I had nothing to do with,' he says. As with the captives, living in the shadow of so much deceit has taken a personal toll.
'It made me a difficult person to live with,' he says. 'You are totally frustrated. But I'm happy with my account. People know the truth. My only concern is to get compensation for those people who were wronged. It caused me an enormous amount of anger and it makes me feel all the more sore about other instances of governments not owning up, apologising and doing the right thing. The Post Office scandal is a good case in point. Another, much further back, is the squaddies who were exposed to radiation during our nuclear tests in the Pacific.'
Given that the government of the time admitted it knew about the invasion earlier than it claimed, the question remains: why was the flight allowed to go ahead? Many believe the answer lies with the young men who boarded at the last minute. Paice is now 'convinced' that a 'military intelligence exploitation of British Airways Flight 149 did take place, despite repeated official denials'.
He says: 'Somebody should come up with an apology for not having accepted that something was going on on the aeroplane, and that that was responsible for the discomfort experienced by nearly 400 people, which was quite unnecessary. British Airways had been warned and took no notice of the warning, and the British government was also warned and also took no action, as it could have done. Both organisations are culpable.'
Paice's account aligned with the version of events being pieced together by Kiwi journalist Stephen Davis, a former member of The Sunday Times' Insight team and The Independent on Sunday, who was writing a book about Flight 149. The Secret History of Flight 149 was published in 2021 – the same year Liz Truss admitted the government had covered up the true timeline. Much of the legal case against British Airways and the government now rests on Davis' reporting, which took nearly 35 years to complete.
He was alerted that all was not as it seemed, almost as soon as the invasion took place. Like other journalists, Davis – then on the news desk at The Independent on Sunday – was fed the official line that the hostages were enjoying 'an extended holiday'.
'Ironically enough, it was true for about three days,' he says. 'The Iraqis were astonished they had been gifted this British Airways plane with all these people. The invasion was pretty disorganised.'
It was not long before he was tipped off that something was amiss. 'I'd done a lot of work reporting on special forces and intelligence services, and I got a call from a contact saying, 'what they're saying about this plane isn't right, you should look into it',' he says.
'That was the start of an epic battle, which has taken more than half my life.'
'Initially it was a cock-up. Everything that's happened since has been the most blatant cover-up.'
Stephen Davis, author of The Secret History of Flight 149
'The Increment'
Davis' version of events is that, as the threat of Iraqi invasion loomed, intelligence services cobbled together a last-minute plan to get a group of operators into Kuwait discreetly. He believes this was a group known as 'The Increment', more recently known as E Squadron, a secretive British paramilitary group mostly composed of ex-servicemen who work closely with the intelligence services.
Davis believes their airfares were paid by a military account and that BA were aware of the operation, which was intended to activate an underground intelligence network during the invasion.
'The initial briefing was predicated on the fact that when the Iraqis invaded, the Kuwait military would hold out for three to five days,' he says. 'This team would fly on the plane, get off, go to their assigned positions, the plane would fly on and nobody would be the wiser. What actually happened was the Kuwaiti military collapsed like a pack of cards. The tanks reached the airport in five hours.
'So initially it was a cock-up. Everything that's happened since has been the most blatant cover-up. A group of guys boarded the plane while it was delayed at Heathrow, got on at the front and walked through the plane to the back. They were seen by dozens of people. Yet British Airways maintains to this day that no group boarded the plane due to the delay.'
A key figure in Davis' enquiries was Lawrence O'Toole, the manager of British Airways in Kuwait. It was O'Toole who went to be briefed by Tony Paice on whether it was appropriate to proceed with the flight.
'British Airways have always maintained they were told it was safe to fly,' Davis says. 'When Liz Truss finally made her statement it completely shot that down.' Paice had actually warned that if a plane went through Kuwait at that time it would get into trouble.
'Further to that, I discovered his wife and child had just come from Switzerland,' Davis adds. 'I tracked down his PA, who was sitting in the office when O'Toole came back from the briefing. He was anxious and told his PA, 'get my wife and kid out on the next flight'. That is not a man who has just been told that nothing is about to happen.'
During disclosure to US lawyers over a comparable claim in the US, British Airways admitted that O'Toole knew of the invasion when he was 'awakened by the sound of tanks and gunfire' at 4am, 15 minutes before the plane landed and when it had not yet entered Kuwaiti airspace and could have been diverted, potentially to Bahrain. But it insisted he was powerless to help.
'Laurie O'Toole could not have turned the aircraft back,' BA said at the time. 'He was aware of military movement. He tried repeatedly to contact airport staff and the embassy but could not raise either.'
Davis believes both the government and British Airways are cautious about admitting culpability, fearing the financial costs as well as reputational damage. In 1995, a French court ordered BA to pay at least £3 million ($15.4 million today) in damages to 61 French nationals on board, ruling the airline had exposed passengers to undue danger by stopping in Kuwait. In 2021, another French court awarded £1.1 million to seven additional passengers. In the mid-'90s BA settled claims from US passengers out of court, requiring them to sign non-disclosure agreements.
In a 2024 statement, British Airways said: 'Our hearts go out to all those caught up in this shocking act of war 34 years ago, who had to endure a truly horrendous experience. UK government records released in 2021 confirmed British Airways was not warned about the invasion.'
Stephen Davis says, 'Liz Truss' statement to the House said: 'On August 1, the British embassy in Kuwait told the local British Airways office that while flights on August 1 should be safe, subsequent flights were inadvisable.' That is a warning, obviously: BA149 was due to arrive on August 2. BA just ignored that part of the statement and focused on the part that they did not get a call after the invasion had started.'
The Ministry of Defence, meanwhile, has previously referred to earlier statements in the House of Commons. 'In 2007 the UK government clearly confirmed in parliament that the government in 1990 did not exploit the flight in any way for military personnel.' A source reiterated to The London Telegraph that 'no military personnel were on board or deployed on BA149 on August 2, 1990″.
It echoes a denial by then-British prime minister John Major in 1993, who responded to letters from Labour minister John Prescott by denying that there were 'military personnel' on the plane and refusing to set up an inquiry. Davis believes this is a verbal 'sleight of hand', as the Increment isn't technically military. In a footnote in the government's defence it says it cannot rule out that there were 'military intelligence' people on the plane 'by coincidence'.
A turning point
The new documentary is directed by Jenny Ash, who first encountered the story eight years ago while interviewing Richard Branson. When asked what he was proudest of, Branson didn't mention ballooning or his business empire but his role in helping to free the hostages.
For Ash, the Flight 149 story is vital not only because of its devastating human toll but because it marked a turning point in history. The film highlights the often-overlooked destruction of Kuwait during the Gulf War – and the profound shift in relations between the West and the Middle East that followed.
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'It's four months when the world completely changed,' she says. 'Up to this point, the Americans are calling Osama bin Laden a freedom fighter. Both Britain and the US were totally in bed with Saddam Hussein. It all imploded when he invaded Kuwait. It's the beginning of everything; 9/11, all of it. And these poor people were caught in the middle of it and spent 30 years being told it never happened.'
Matthew Jury, the lawyer representing more than 100 claimants suing the government and British Airways, believes that, based on what he has seen, this is another in the seeming 'lineage' of British government cover-ups.
'There's an abundance of material pointing to BA and the government being culpable for the harm the passengers and crew have suffered, yet they continue to deny it. We hope this litigation will allow the truth to be revealed and those responsible to be held to account.' No dates have been set but Jury hopes to have a trial before the end of 2026.
For the victims, it cannot come soon enough. 'We'd have understood that governments sometimes have a choice between shit decision and another shit decision,' says Jennifer Chappell. 'We get that. But the utter disrespect to keep lying. The [soldiers] on the plane have spoken about it. We have their testimony. Why are the authorities still lying about it? Have the guts to stand up and say, 'this is what we did, we're sorry you got caught in the crossfire and we're going to try to make it right'.
'That was all they had to do. Instead, they've lied and lied and lied. They've gaslit us, in modern parlance, for 35 years. I want to see our names cleared. We haven't made it up. This stuff happened and it ruined our lives, and they were responsible – the British government for using a commercial flight as a de facto military transport, and British Airways for putting 368 passengers and 36 of their own staff at risk.'
The 747 was eventually blown up. Subsequent wars in the Middle East have eclipsed the first Gulf War. For those caught up in Flight 149 – and those who have made it their mission to help them – the search for the truth goes on.