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Mark Hughes

PASSENGERS on board the aborted Dragonair flight from Hong Kong told yesterday how they feared they would die as hail and lightning pelted and buffeted their plane on the nightmare journey to Beijing.

  The Lockheed TriStar 11, which was carrying the British Ambassador to Beijing, Sir Robin McLaren, and 300 other passengers, had its nose and cockpit windows shattered during the storm on Saturday.

  Passengers screamed in horror as the aircraft, Flight KA330, repeatedly bucked and swayed, plunging many metres at one stage.

  ''The only thing holding us in our seats was our seat belts,'' said Jordana Estes, 42, who was flying with friends for a holiday in the Chinese capital.

  She said the cabin lights constantly flashed on and off and the air pressure kept changing dramatically.

  ''We had already resolved that we would die. Lightning kept flashing, illuminating the interior. It was terrifying.''   Catherine Barber, a 28-year-old on a business trip for a British engineering company, said she did not want to repeat the journey but had to fly to Beijing to complete her business.

  ''I am absolutely terrified,'' she said as she prepared to check in for the substitute flight from Kai Tak yesterday afternoon.

  ''It was so frightening. The thought of spending three hours more on that flight scares me stiff.''   Karel Pieterman, 36, a Dutch businessman, said he thought the captain had been surprised by the strength of the storm.

  ''The lightning must have struck the front part of the plane. It was so close. We were really right in the middle of things. Some of the ladies were anxious and yelling. The captain said Beijing airport was closed because of bad weather so he had to return to Hong Kong where he could use instrument landing,'' Mr Pieterman said.

  Mohammed Anwar, 46, from Pakistan, said: ''I was frightened. I prayed for all the passengers. We thought 'this is the end, this is the end'.''   A Hong Kong passenger, who did not want to be identified, criticised Dragonair for offering Hong Kong residents just $150 for taxi fares home after the flight. Residents of other countries were put up for the night in hotels.

  ''Some people lived in the New Territories. It would have cost them $180 to get home. It's not the money, it's the principle. They are saying it was the weather and they are not responsible. All we want is fair compensation,'' she said.

  The woman also claimed friends of hers due to fly from Tokyo to Beijing at about the same time had been told their flight was cancelled because of the bad weather.

  ''If they did not fly from Tokyo, why did they fly from here?''  Joe Jordan, who was visiting Beijing with fellow members of the Royal College of Obstetricians from Britain, praised the captain and cabin staff for their cool handling of the situation.

  Sir Robin described the trip as ''dramatic'' and ''exciting'' upon his arrival in Beijing yesterday.

  ''We were descending to Beijing airport when we met a very violent storm, which had a great deal of thunder and lightning and immense hailstones,'' Sir Robin said.

  ''They smashed the front part of the windscreen of the aircraft and, as we found out when we got back to Hong Kong, also the nose cone was completely smashed.''   Other passengers sitting in the first-class section of the plane with Sir Robin said they could see the aircraft heading into the storm.

  ''It was foreseeable. They could see we were going into a storm. We could not figure out why they were still going into it,'' said one woman accompanying a Venezuelan diplomat.

  ''The atmosphere in first-class was quiet. It was like being scared to death but silent. Everyone thought we had had it. We spoke to the pilot or co-pilot afterwards. He said they [air traffic controllers] did not communicate very well. He said the windshield was hit by lightning.''   A Dragonair representative said the company had heard from Beijing that it had been all right for the flight to take off. He declined to comment further.



We thought we were going to die, say Dragonair passengers