remained at Kuwait International Airport throughout the war, was destroyed on the ground by an aircraft attack during the latter stages of the conflict; the destruction may have been an intentional act of the US military to prevent its capture. Alternatively, the aircraft may have been destroyed by Iraqi ground forces during their withdrawal from Kuwait. As a consequence of its destruction, British Airways was able to collect on the airliner's insurance. Two of the aircraft's landing gears were salvaged and are displayed at Waterside, British Airways' headquarters. Immediate reaction In the days that followed, British Airways expressed its outrage at Flight 149's situation. BA's chairman, Lord King, publicly blamed the Foreign Office and the British security services for their failure to promptly designate Kuwait as a war zone, which would have caused the flight to be diverted. BA's area manager for Kuwait and Iraq Laurie O'Toole later claimed to have contacted the British Embassy in Kuwait prior to BA 149's departure to ask if it was safe to continue flights within the region and was told that a full-scale invasion of Kuwait was unlikely. Very quickly, there was considerable public controversy over whether the British government would have been able to intervene to avoid Flight 149's detention, as well as when had it become aware of the invasion of Kuwait. During September 1990, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stated that Flight 149 had landed in Kuwait hours prior to the invasion. However, passengers on board BA 149 reportedly heard gunfire and tank activity during their layover in Kuwait City and a member of the inbound crew also claimed to have heard "loud bangs" whilst being ferried from the airport to their hotel; Thatcher also attributed an earlier point in time for the invasion in her memoirs. British Airways and the Foreign Office have both claimed that Flight 149 had landed in Kuwait two hours following the start of the invasion. Detention of passengers After leaving the aircraft, all the passengers and crew were captured on the ground by Iraqi forces who had overrun Kuwait City. The majority of the detained passengers were initially transferred to the airport hotel within the boundaries of the airport until the crew of BA 149 negotiated for everyone to be moved to the Regency Hotel where British Airways crew and staff flying into Kuwait were routinely based. The crew of BA 149 and some of