The Volcano
That Stopped
a 747

Four Engines, Fourteen Thousand Feet, Zero Power

KLM Flight 867, a Boeing 747-406M named City of Calgary, was descending toward Anchorage with 231 passengers and 14 crew aboard when it entered an ash cloud drifting from Redoubt's ongoing eruption. Volcanic ash isn't smoke. It's pulverized rock and glass, and at engine temperatures it melts and re-solidifies as a coating that fools the sensors meant to protect the engine, triggering an automatic shutdown. All four of the plane's engines quit within moments of each other, and the crew rode a silent, engine-less 747 down more than 14,000 feet before managing to restart two engines and, eventually, all four, landing safely in Anchorage. Nobody aboard was hurt. The aircraft itself needed more than 80 million dollars in repairs, including all four engines replaced; a shipment of live animals in the cargo hold, including African birds, genets, and tortoises, wasn't as lucky, and several didn't survive.

That single flight was one encounter inside a much longer eruption. Redoubt's 1989–90 eruption ran from December through the following April, producing 23 separate major explosive phases and roughly 160 million dollars in total damage, at the time the second-costliest volcanic eruption in United States history. Air traffic disruptions from the ash reached well beyond Alaska, and the eruption remains the clearest reason Redoubt sits on the Alaska Volcano Observatory's watch list alongside every other active volcano in the state.

Twenty Years Later, It Erupted Again

Redoubt stirred again starting in the fall of 2008, with the first faint volcanic tremor recorded on September 23. Six months of building unrest followed before the mountain produced its first steam-driven explosion on March 15, 2009, then its first true magmatic explosion a week later, on March 22. Over the following weeks, 19 major ash-producing explosions sent columns as high as 62,000 feet, nearly twelve miles, into the sky, with an April 4 cloud reaching roughly 50,000 feet on its own. Two lahars, fast-moving mixes of volcanic debris and melted snow, roared down the Drift River valley on March 23 and April 4, reaching depths of up to ten meters and partially inundating the Drift River oil terminal downstream.

Anchorage felt it directly. Ash fall forced Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport to shut down for a full 20 hours, from roughly 5 p.m. on March 28 to 1 p.m. on March 29, grounding flights across a hub that much of the state depends on. The eruption's final lava dome stopped growing on July 1, 2009, having reached an estimated volume of about 72 million cubic meters, and Redoubt has sat quiet since, watched continuously by the Alaska Volcano Observatory along with 51 other active volcanoes across the state.

Redoubt's elevation, 1989–90 eruption history, and total damage figures checked against the National Park Service's official Redoubt Volcano page. The 2009 eruption timeline, ash column heights, lahar details, and airport closure checked against the U.S. Geological Survey's official report on the 2009 eruption. KLM Flight 867's specific flight details, not covered on NPS or USGS pages, were checked against published aviation-history sourcing.

Redoubt hasn't erupted since 2009, but nothing about that mountain in the Chigmits is finished. The Alaska Volcano Observatory still watches it the way it watches every active volcano in the state, waiting for the next round of tremors that once, on an otherwise routine December afternoon, dropped a jumbo jet out of the sky and gave 245 people a story they'd spend the rest of their lives telling.