This week marks the 29th anniversary of the Kegworth air disaster, when a plane crashed onto an M1 motorway embankment near East Midlands Airport, claiming the lives of 47 passengers.

It was just before 8.30pm on January 8, 1989 when the plane hit the ground.

British Midland Airways flight BD92, travelling from London Heathrow Airport to Belfast, had been diverted to East Midlands Airport after a blade in one of its engines fractured.

But when the second engine stopped working the plane crash-landed just a few hundred yards from the runway, hitting the embankment of the M1.

Horrified villagers in Kegworth saw the Boeing 737 burst into flames and claimed that if it had come down just seconds earlier it would have wiped out homes.

47 people died in the Kegworth Air Disaster
47 people died in the Kegworth Air Disaster

The pilot of BD92 was quickly labelled a hero for managing to avoid the Leicestershire village and experts said the chances of both engines failing were one hundred million to one.

But Captain Kevin Hunt, from Aston-upon-Trent in Derbyshire, and First Officer David McClelland, from Donaghadee, County Down, were criticised in the subsequent investigation when it emerged they had switched off the working engine, and were later dismissed by the airline.

The men, however, blamed the indications from the engine instruments and claimed they were made scapegoats after the crash, which happened just 18 days after the Lockerbie bombing.

David Jones, then chair of Kegworth Parish Council, was one of many locals who helped the injured.

"My first reaction was shock and awe. I just remember parts of the plane on the motorway and the embankments," he told the Loughborough Echo.

"It was like a film set and too much to take in.

"We saw they were struggling to get the injured on stretchers over a fence, so three or four of us ripped this big fence out of the ground completely.

"We created a line of people so we could pass the stretchers away from the debris.

The tragedy took place on January 8, 1989
The tragedy took place on January 8, 1989

"I also asked a fireman if I could go on board and help get some of the injured out. I saw a lot of injured and dead people. I'd never seen a dead person before.

"I couldn't drive past the site for quite a while. It was about three months later I finally went back there and cried.

"It still comes back to me when I go past the site, and there's not many days when you don't think about it.

"The one good thing that came out of it is that a lot of friendships were made.

"Some people from the village stayed with the injured and that led to friendships that remain now."

A Birmingham Mail man on the scene was Neil White, one of a team of reporters scrambled to Kegworth to spend all night gathering eight pages of reports for the next day's paper.

Neil remembers: "I was at home that night and saw a report on the news so I called the newsdesk and asked 'Do you want me to go?'

"I was there within about an hour-and-a-half of the crash and was on one side of the carriageway looking over to the other side where the plane was embedded.

"I remember writing that it looked like paper torn in two. There was a phenomenal amount of activity going on around the plane and on the opposite side it was almost like a football terrace of journalists."

Neil, a former editor of the Derby Telegraph, stayed all night until noon the following day, reporting on an impromptu press conference by then Transport Secretary Paul Channon and speaking with villagers in Kegworth.

He says: "When people ask 'What are the biggest stories you've worked on?' Kegworth comes near the top of that list.

"As a serious news story it is without a doubt up there amongst the biggest stories I've ever been involved with.

"And in terms of actually witnessing something in front of your face, nothing comes close to that – and neither would I want it to ever again. I don't think anybody who was there would be blasé about it."

A memorial still stands in the village of Kegworth remembering "those who died, those who were injured and those who took part in the rescue operation" on January 8, 1989.