On the 10th of June, 1990, British Airways Flight 5390 was on its way to Spain, when
without warning two of the six cockpit windows exploded from their frames. In other circumstances,
on another flight, an incident of explosive decompression in the cockpit might have been
the beginning of a deadly disaster… but, miraculously, the crew on board were able
to bring the plane safely to the ground with no loss of life.
Flight 5390 began as a fairly routine flight. Departing from Birmingham Airport, it would
be flying to Malaga in Spain – a journey of just under three hours. Weather conditions
on the day were pleasant and clear. The Captain in charge of the flight was Tim Lancaster,
with 11,000 hours of experience, and the co-pilot was Alastair Atchison, with 7,900 hours under
his belt. Though they hadn’t worked together before they got along well, and together guided
the aircraft through a smooth, completely normal take-off. On board were 84 passengers,
and six further crew members, all of them looking forward to a short, calm, ordinary
flight. With the takeoff completed, Captain Lancaster
activated the autopilot and undid the shoulder straps of his seatbelt, making himself comfortable
for the journey ahead. Steward Nigel Ogden stepped into the cockpit and took the breakfast
order for the two pilots, promising to return in a few moments with two cups of tea.
All was well. Everything was peaceful. And then, quite suddenly, it wasn’t.
Completely without warning, two of the cockpit windows exploded outwards. The window panels
themselves disappeared into the void, leaving the cockpit open to the elements. The abrupt
change in pressure was explosive, blasting the door between the cockpit and the main
cabin of the aircraft off its hinges, and pulling Captain Lancaster out of his seat
and part of the way through the window – only his legs remained inside the cockpit, with
the rest of his body slammed against the outside of the plane.
Mr Ogden – the steward who had just popped in to offer the pilots a cup of tea – had
been standing outside the cockpit when the explosive decompression occurred. Startled
by the blast, he ducked back into the cockpit to consult the pilots… only to find a scene
of absolute chaos before him. Captain Lancaster was hanging almost entirely
out of a broken cockpit window. His feet – just about the only part of him still in the cockpit
– were jammed against the controls, forcing the plane into a steep dive. Co-pilot Atchison
was struggling to get control of the plummeting aircraft, but wasn’t making much headway.
And, on top of all this, the cockpit was filled with a thick fog and an incredibly noisy and
powerful wind – a wind which made communication impossible, and which was also sucking every
loose object in sight out of the window. With no time to think of an alternate course
of action, Mr Ogden lunged forward, grabbed Captain Lancaster’s legs, and held on.
Co-pilot Atchison faced a serious struggle to get the plane under control. With the windows
broken, he was attempting to operate a plane while being battered by gale force winds,
and in temperatures that were falling to below freezing. The noise levels were so extreme
that he could not hear anything being said on the radio, and – worst of all – he
couldn’t get control of the plane while Captain Lancaster’s legs were still jammed
against the controls. Mr Ogden, holding tight to Captain Lancaster’s
legs, was soon joined by another two stewards. One of them looped an arm through the seatbelt
of one of the empty seats in the cockpit and anchored the human chain, allowing Mr Ogden
to finally haul Captain Lancaster’s legs away from the controls.
Atchison could now bring the aircraft out of its dive… but he hesitated for a few
more seconds before doing so to allow the plane to get down low enough that the air
would be breathable without an oxygen mask. By the time he did level out the plane, they
had dived clean through an extremely busy layer of airspace, miraculously managing to
avoid a collision with any other craft. Though the plane was now back under control,
those on board weren’t yet in the clear. And it wasn’t just Captain Lancaster’s
life that was at stake. Although he would certainly die if he slipped out of the window,
it was also possible that he would be sucked into the engine, potentially causing the plane
to crash. One of the stewards buckled himself into the
jump seat in the cockpit, and – working together – the three men managed to hook
Captain Lancaster’s feet over the back of the pilot’s chair, where they could then
hold him relatively securely in place. The forces acting on his body were such that they
couldn’t possibly drag him back inside the cockpit, but they could at least hold on.
Now that the plane was no longer diving and the situation within the cockpit had stabilised,
co-pilot Atchison could finally actually hear his radio. He informed air traffic controllers
as best he was able of the nature of the emergency, and requested clearance to land as soon as
possible. He was offered a runway at nearby Southampton airport – an unfamiliar airport
to him, but really the only option if he wanted to get on the ground quickly.
The prospect then, was a daunting one: co-pilot Atchison would need to effect a landing at
an airport he’d never approached before, on his own, while battered by freezing cold
winds, and without any charts or other reference materials, all of which had disappeared out
of the window. Furthermore, the plane was full of fuel and did not have the time or
opportunity to dump any, and was to be landing on a runway that was rather shorter than would
be ideal. Co-pilot Atchison, though clearly worried,
remained calm and brought the plane into Southampton. With the help of a controller on the ground
he executed a near-perfect landing – the kind of landing that really shouldn’t have
been possible when the Captain of the aircraft was hanging halfway out of a broken cockpit
window. Emergency services were on the scene to meet
Flight 5390. Traumatised passengers were escorted out, while paramedics and cabin crew pulled
Captain Lancaster back into the cockpit and gave first aid. At this stage it was generally
assumed that Captain Lancaster was dead… the forces he’d been subjected to – the
cold, the lack of oxygen, the buffeting winds – should reasonably have killed him. But,
much to everyone’s surprise, he was still alive. He sported several broken bones, many
cuts and grazes and widespread frostbite… but within just a few days he was answering
questions for the press from his hospital bed.
As soon as the plane was safely down on the ground, an investigation was launched to discover
what had caused the loss of the cockpit windows. One of the ejected windows was retrieved from
a field in Oxfordshire, and both it and the aircraft were thoroughly inspected. The cause
of the incident was readily apparent: the windscreens had been secured with the wrong
bolts. Around 90 bolts had been used to secure the
windscreens in place after recent maintenance. 84 of these bolts were found to be very slightly
too narrow. The difference between the bolts that were used and the bolts that should have
been used was less than the width of a credit card – a difference that would not be visible
without extremely close inspection. The remaining six bolts were the correct diameter, but were
very slightly too short. Again the difference between what was used and what should have
been used was tiny – just 2.5 millimetres (or about one-tenth of an inch).
How had this happened? Suspicion fell upon the worker who had replaced the windscreen
during that recent maintenance session. He was interviewed, and it was found that he
had made several small but significant mistakes. When the aircraft came to him, the windscreens
were in fact already fitted with the wrong bolts. Rather than checking the manual and
discovering this, however, the engineer attempted to replace them like-for-like. In doing so,
however, he relied on a visual comparison of the old bolts with the new ones rather
than actually checking the part numbers. Because of this he ended up replacing the
wrong bolts that had been in place when he started work with a different set of bolts
that were also the wrong size. He hadn’t checked the manual. He’d ignored the advice
of one of his colleagues, and nobody had been on hand to check his work once it was done.
Though the bolts used were almost identical to the bolts that should have been used, they
were different enough in width and length to create a weakness that ensured that the
cockpit window would fail. Following the incident, British Airways engineering
policies were reinforced, with the incident becoming a case study for engineers within
the company and beyond. Every plane of a similar design was checked, and at least two were
found to windscreens secured with the wrong bolts. Because of the non-lethal incident
on board Flight 5390, this error was corrected before another, perhaps more deadly, cockpit
blowout could take place. The near-disaster was caused by a series of
tiny errors. Bolts that were just slightly too small, a momentary decision to go like-for-like
rather than checking the paperwork. And, likewise, disaster was averted by a series of momentary
decisions: to jump into the ravaged cockpit and grab the Captain’s legs. To continue
a terrifying dive long enough to reach oxygen. To take on a technically difficult landing
at an unfamiliar airport in order to get down to the ground as quickly as possible. Split-second
decisions, all of them – but just as some split-second decisions can cause a disaster,
so can others prevent one.