Latest news with #Flight149
Irish Independent
12-06-2025
- Irish Independent
‘Flight 149: Hostage of War': The staggering story of 400 people taken hostage by Saddam Hussein's forces –and the cover up that followed
Governments lie all the time. At the centre of staggering documentary Flight 149: Hostage of War (Sky Documentaries, available on demand) is a massive lie compounded by a cover-up: that the 400 passengers and crew of British Airways Flight 149, who were taken hostage by Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces 35 years ago, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Daily Mail
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Race Across The World: I could win Race Across The World's £20,000 first prize - and here's how
Why not just hire a car? The rules of Race Across The World prohibit air travel, but taxis and hitch-hiking are fair game . . . so there can't be anything wrong with renting your own wheels. As contestants neared the finish line at India 's southern tip, after a trek via train, bus and tuktuk from the Great Wall of China, all of them had cash to spare. Budgets have been tighter than ever before on this series but, despite that, every one of the four couples had enough money to go by cab on the final leg. It's taken them 51 days to cover 8,700 miles, which is an average of 170 miles a day. Driving a rental, they could easily have covered the distance in half the time. And if a hire car was too expensive, why not buy a motorbike? It's just the devious way my mind works, but surely there must be a shortcut to victory. When the race was set in Canada two years ago, several pairs of competitors cadged lifts with obliging Canucks. I'd be inclined to find an amateur chauffeur and offer him a bribe: get me to the final checkpoint ahead of the pack, and you can have a quarter of the £20,000 prize money. It's an expensive way to win — but losing is more expensive. Muscle rub of the week When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, we learned on Flight 149: Hostage Of War (Sky Documentaries), President George Bush was in the White House, getting a massage. That's what you call lying down on the job. None of the five duos was prepared to cheat, of course, because the real winners on this show are the ones who forge tighter bonds with each other along the way. The race's producers have done an exceptional job of picking the right participants: all of them have been likeable and interesting, and every couple has grown closer week by week. Both sets of siblings, Elizabeth and Letitia, and Brian and Melvyn, barely knew each other at the start of the trip. Thank goodness that, as it turned out, they discovered they genuinely liked each other. Might have been awkward if the adventure had simply served to remind them why they drifted apart in the first place. We've all been hoping that young lovers Fin and Sioned would get wed along the way. Sioned certainly was. When she and her boyfriend were presented with garlands at a flower market in Bengaluru, she told him hopefully, 'We can get married now.' The most touching relationship has been that of the eventual winners, mother-and-son Caroline and Tom. She obviously adores him, and he's learned to show his appreciation, finding the words to thank her in a sweet diary entry. Still, she's sensible to be wary of him first thing in the morning. Her tactic at home, she said, is to take him a cup of tea in bed and a bacon butty — and then run. Millions of parents will sympathise. It was the show's bad luck, though, that the most intriguing couple, divorcees Yin and Gaz, were eliminated halfway through the series. What would it take to bring those two back together — maybe a stint in the jungle on I'm A Celebrity next?
The Guardian
11-06-2025
- The Guardian
Flight 149: Hostage of War review – a tale so staggering you couldn't write it
If it were a work of fiction, the story of Flight 149 would probably be deemed too horrifying – or too unbelievable – for television. Indeed, as a documentary interspersed with dramatic reconstructions, at points it is almost unbearable to watch. But it is a crucial piece of work: a one-off film that goes deep into a bizarre and increasingly hideous ordeal to ask how and why it happened. On 2 August 1990, a British Airways plane carrying nearly 400 passengers and crew from London to Kuala Lumpur touched down for a scheduled stopover in Kuwait. Those on board knew nothing of the unfolding Iraqi invasion of the country and the brutality Saddam Hussein was inflicting on his neighbours (this would, of course, soon lead to the Gulf war). British Airways maintains that it, too, was unaware of what was taking place, while the British government said it didn't know what was happening until after the plane had landed. Later, it would emerge that it had, in fact, received information before the plane had reached the terminal, but that it wasn't shared with the airline. Staggeringly, many of those on board would spend the next four months in the country, human shields in an unfurling international conflict, with no clear route home. Charlie Kristiansson, a former BA steward, recalls the place looking 'like the gates of hell had opened', as bombs began to explode around them. Initially, the passengers were put up in a plush hotel – a cocoon of sorts, he says. But as time went on, they were dispatched to various squalid locations, including a bungalow where the walls were smothered in excrement. The goal of Jenny Ash's documentary – much like the multi-Bafta-winning Mr Bates Vs the Post Office – is as much to entertain as to shine a light on what may be a colossal miscarriage of justice. Many of the interviewees here don't simply address a faceless producer behind a camera – they sit face to face with lawyers from the human rights firm McCue Jury & Partners. Last year, these testimonies were used to construct a class-action lawsuit against BA and the government. The government could have diverted Flight 149, but – for reasons that remain unclear – didn't. Stephen Davis, an investigative journalist who reported on the story for the Independent on Sunday at the time, has helped to illuminate what else may have been going on. Namely, allegations that the flight was used to aid a British intelligence operation. There are interviews here with Margaret Thatcher's former foreign affairs private secretary Charles Powell and the former US diplomat Barbara Bodine. These are bolstered by archive material that transports viewers back to the chaos unfolding on news bulletins and even Teletext. But the real heft comes from the survivors' stories, which sit side by side with reconstructions that feel hazy and incredibly unnerving and which mirror the subjects' dissociation. Jennifer Chappell, then 12, recalls seeing the lyrics of the Guns N' Roses song Paradise City on the walls of the military compound where she and her family were held. The moment is recreated by a young actor (Orla Taylor), who lies on a bed in the foetal position singing along to Axl Rose ('Oh, won't you please take me home?'). Elsewhere, Kristiansson flinches as he relives the savage sexual assault he was subjected to by an Iraqi soldier, as we are drawn, flashback-like, into the kind of stark tower block where it happened. Barry Manners, separated from his partner, Anthony Yong, in excruciating circumstances, recalls the places he would go in his brain to escape the horror of being locked in a dark room at the site of a dam, not knowing whether it was night or day. Viewers see the couple as they would have been in another life, listening to jazz on a beach in Thailand. Yong died not long after returning to the UK, his already poor health exacerbated by the nightmare of it all. Unsurprisingly, the passengers of Flight 149 think about what happened every day. Chappell has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder and has attempted to kill herself. The nearest we get to a happy ending is when Deborah Saloom, an American passenger, recounts her reunion with her husband, known as B George, whom she feared she would never see again (women and children were let out of the country before the men). Stress is engraved into the faces of practically every person we see on screen. Then head of security at Kuwait airport, Mohammad Al-Dossari, says the BA passengers were 'used like chess pieces'. Now, what they desperately want to know is what the people moving those pieces were thinking. Or, as Manners puts it: 'Why the fuck was I in this situation in the first place?' Even if we don't get all the answers, this is a truly excellent place to start. Flight 149: Hostage of War aired on Sky Documentaries and is available on Now In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@ or jo@ In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at
Times
11-06-2025
- Times
Flight 149: Hostage of War review — vivid accounts of an ordeal by Saddam Hussein
If you asked the general public (older members, obviously) to recall the most memorable image of the 1990 Flight 149 hostage crisis, they would probably cite the footage of Saddam Hussein stroking the hair of the five-year-old hostage Stuart Lockwood like a creepy uncle: a sinister geopolitical PR stunt. But far worse was happening to the traumatised hostages behind the scenes, as Flight 149: Hostage of War (Sky Documentaries/Now) spelt out in exacting and horribly absorbing detail. Mock executions, near starvation, being told that the holes dug in front of them were for their bodies, a British Airways steward being taken away by an Iraqi soldier and raped. What a story this was, what a horrendous ordeal for those unwitting BA passengers trapped in Kuwait and being used by Hussein as human shields. It was extremely well-told, the revelations unfolding at the pace of (no disrespect to those involved) a thriller. Surely this will be made into a film one day? Though presumably it would have to wait until the legal battle against the British government and BA is concluded; they are being sued by a group of passengers and crew who claim they were knowingly put in danger. The flight, said one of the hostages, was a Trojan horse so that a special forces team could be dropped in to gather intelligence as Hussein moved to invade Kuwait; the passengers collateral damage. 'Why did they let us land in a war zone?' asked one. It's a fascinating question. I don't know why it showed us some of those hostages being interviewed by lawyers asking questions in a blank office, rather than simply interviewing them in the normal way. It made things look a bit stagey, which was quite unnecessary because this stuff was more than dramatic enough. Not only Hussein steamrollering his way into another country and killing its civilians — it's the individual human stories that make this so vivid. The victims are still suffering the effects 35 years on — mental health struggles, trauma and the terrible sense that they have been gaslit by their own country. Barry Manners and his partner Anthony Yong were en route to Kuala Lumpur. Yong had HIV/Aids and when they were taken hostage and corralled in a hotel, Manners told staff Yong needed medication. • When they learnt what the medicine was for, they told them to stay in the room, gave them disinfectant and left food outside in the corridor. Yong was later smuggled to safety disguised as an Indian cleaner, Manners left behind to become a human shield at a hydroelectric plant where a drunk soldier put a gun to his head and threatened to kill the 'English bastard'. And that's just one story; there are so many more, just as traumatic. Such as that of the air steward Charlie Kristiansson, who spent 132 days in captivity and at one point was driven to a tower by a soldier and raped. And Clive Earthy, who was told one day: 'I'm afraid you've got to be shot, Mr Clive' — but they assured him the shooter knew exactly where to aim so it would be quick. And Jennifer Chappell, who was only 12 at the time and who has suffered with mental health struggles ever since. War, obviously, is complex and requires making difficult decisions, and the government has expressed sympathy for the victims while denying that it 'exploited' the flight. But these people feel betrayed and, whatever your view on political necessity, there's something about this tale that is decidedly odd. ★★★★✰
Glasgow Times
11-06-2025
- Glasgow Times
Scot held hostage by Saddam Hussein hopes for justice
Charlie Kristiansson, an air steward from Uddingston, Lanarkshire, was among 385 passengers and crew on BA Flight 149 when it landed in Kuwait to refuel on August 2, 1990—despite British authorities having already been informed that Iraqi forces had launched an invasion. The terrified hostages, including 11 children, were rounded up and used by Saddam's regime as 'human shields' at military sites. Many were starved, beaten, and sexually assaulted by their captors, reports the Daily Record. READ MORE: Thug knocked out three of teen's teeth with one punch Kristiansson and others are now part of a class legal action accusing the UK Government and British Airways of knowingly endangering them. The lawsuit alleges that Flight 149 was being used to covertly deliver a British intelligence team into the region under the cover of a civilian flight. Charlie hopes the new Sky documentary Flight 149: Hostage of War will increase pressure on authorities to come clean after what he calls a 35-year-long 'cover-up.' He said to the Daily Record: "The documentary is just another step in our harrowing journey. That flight was a Trojan horse. I want the Government and BA dragged into the courts and forced to tell the truth. 'The suffering was unbearable, and it was all avoidable. We were betrayed by the Government and I will never forgive them. I am furious.' Charlie was 28 at the time, working aboard the London-to-Malaysia flight, tending to passengers as the plane prepared to depart after its stopover, when Iraqi jets began bombing Kuwait International Airport. Explosions shredded the runway, and the crew rushed to evacuate passengers onto buses driven by fleeing Kuwaiti ground staff. The Iraqi military soon rounded up the foreigners and took them to Kuwait City's Regency Palace Hotel, claiming they were to be 'guests of Iraq.' On the way, Charlie saw the devastation of war—bodies abandoned among the rubble and twisted wreckage. READ MORE: Woman jailed in UK's first monkey torture case Initially, the hostages believed the British Government and BA would intervene. Charlie recalled: 'They offered us no help at all. 'We soon realised we were on our own.' He and a group of other male crew members and stewardesses were taken to a derelict bungalow at Shuwaikh Port, which was covered in excrement and infested with flies. They were terrorised by soldiers who warned them they'd be shot if they tried to escape. Charlie, who is 6ft 5in, saw his weight fall to just 6.5 stones. In November, Charlie was taken from the group and moved to a missile base near Baghdad, where he was held alongside six Scottish air force pilots who were regularly tortured. There, a kind Iraqi doctor convinced the guards to let Charlie go to a hospital, where he was finally able to phone his mother back in Scotland. He said: 'It was like she was in the world of the living and I was trapped in hell with the dead. 'I felt I would never see her again.' After five months in captivity, the hostages were released in December 1990. Charlie left British Airways after 13 years, disillusioned by what he describes as mounting evidence of the authorities' disregard for the lives on board Flight 149. He now lives in Luxembourg, teaching English. Despite the trauma, he continues to campaign for the truth. It was revealed in 2021 that the Foreign Office had been warned of Saddam's invasion more than an hour before Flight 149 landed at 4.13am Kuwaiti time. However, the Government denied that BA had been alerted, or that any intelligence team was aboard. READ MORE: Glasgow teacher struck off after pupils discover her explicit OnlyFans account In the documentary, Tony Paice, then-head of MI6 in Kuwait, claims he directly warned a senior British Airways official not to let the flight land. Multiple passengers also recall seeing a mysterious group of 10 men board the flight—believed to be covert operatives—though their presence has never been officially acknowledged. British Airways continues to state it received no warning. Flight 149: Hostage of War airs on Sky Documentaries from Wednesday, June 11.
