What happened to Flight 149? True story behind Sky documentary explained
Sky Documentaries delves into an extraordinary chapter from the Gulf War that is as fascinating as it is horrifying in Flight 149: Hostage of War.
The 367 passengers and crew of British Airways flight 149 were taken hostage after the plane landed at Kuwait International Airport on 2 August 1990, shortly after Iraq launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour, prompting the start of the Gulf War. Some hostages were mistreated, seriously sexually assaulted and kept in near-starvation conditions.
Until recently, many accounts connected to the BA flight in August 1990 – particularly about when the government had known the invasion was under way and around claims that it had let it go ahead for intelligence gathering purposes – had been officially denied. The new documentary examines the accounts of passengers and crew, among others, about what happened that day.
A synopsis from Sky says: "On August 2, 1990, just after Saddam's forces storm Kuwait, a civilian flight unwittingly touches down in the middle of the warzone. The passengers and crew find themselves trapped, held as hostages by Saddam Hussein, becoming pawns in a rapidly escalating international crisis that will reshape the Middle East.
"For over three decades, the British government denied any prior knowledge of the invasion before the plane's ill-fated landing. Now, new information has come to light to challenge the official narrative and the surviving hostages are taking the British government and BA to court to seek justice and the truth."
Viewers will see some of the surviving hostages, Kuwaiti resistance fighters, investigative journalist Stephen Davis, and political insiders give their view on the events that unfolded. But what happened to BA Flight 149?
BA flight 149 took off from Heathrow on 1 August 1990 after hours of delays with 385 people on board (including 18 crew). They were bound for Subang International Airport, which at the time was the main travel hub for Kuala Lumpur.
On its journey to Malaysia, the flight was scheduled for a refuelling stop in Kuwait and another in Madras. But Iraq had launched an invasion of Kuwait in the early hours of 2 August and the plane never reached Subang as Hussein's forces had taken control of Kuwait International airport.
Some of the passengers had been due to finish their journey in Kuwait and left the plane, while those expecting to continue on were told that the airport had been closed for two hours. But when Iraqi forces reportedly bombed the runway and took out the control tower, the remaining people on board were evacuated from the plane, but then captured by the army and taken as hostages.
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The empty Flight 149 was later blown up on the runway, but it isn't clear who was responsible for destroying it – the US military may have been trying to prevent Iraq from using it.
Although the hostages were kept in the same hotel to begin with, they were later split up into smaller groups and held in different locations in Kuwait and Iraq. Their horrific ordeal included mental and physical abuse, rape and witnessing Kuwaiti civilians and soldiers killed by the army.
The plane's pilot Captain Richard Brunyate managed to escape with the Kuwaiti resistance, later explaining that his father was considered an enemy by Hussein and he worried what would happen to him if his name was recognised.
Some other small numbers of passengers and crew also managed to escape with the resistance at various points. One of the hostages died in captivity, and the others either escaped or were released in the weeks and months after their capture.
Women and children were given the chance to be released in late August, but the hostages left behind were used by the Iraqi army as human shields whilst moving between locations. The last remaining hostages were released in December 1990.
British Airways immediately complained that they had been allowed to fly into Kuwait after the invasion had begun, arguing that it should have been designated as a war zone by the Foreign Office to redirect the stopover.
Then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher claimed that the flight had arrived into Kuwait hours before the invasion, but many of the passengers and crew reported hearing gunfire, tanks and loud bangs when they landed in Kuwait City.
The airline has awarded damages to some of the groups of passengers who took court action against them. However, despite the British government denying trying to influence BA in any way to fly into Kuwait, BA have repeatedly made statements that they were told by the government that it was safe to fly there.
A 2007 documentary revealed that other flights had been diverted away from Kuwait during the journey and that news of the invasion could have been passed on to Flight 149 at least an hour before it landed for refuelling. The documentary also included claims from an anonymous former SAS soldier who claimed that he and his team had been put on board the flight for intelligence gathering on the invasion.
In 2021, then foreign secretary Liz Truss admitted that the government at the time had misled BA by not passing on a warning to the airline. A group of passengers are now suing the government and the airline over the claims that the flight was allowed to land in Kuwait as part of an SAS mission, with the new Sky documentary telling their story.
The documentary airs on Sky Documentaries on Wednesday, 11 June at 9pm and is then repeated over the following week.
It can also be streamed on Sky and NOW.
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