Every day, about 10 million people take commercial flights to get from point A to point B. Almost
100,000 planes take off and land without a hitch. But from time to time, very rarely,
an accident will happen that seems to spike cases of aviophobia all over the world. Like
that time when a captain was partially pulled out of the cockpit, dangling in the sky at
an altitude of 17,000 ft (5,181 m)!
As it usually happens, nothing was amiss at first. The captain of the County of South
Glamorgan, a mid-sized jet airliner, was 42-year-old Tim Lancaster, with 11,050 flight hours under
his belt. His co-pilot was 39-year-old Alastair Stuart Atchison who had 7,500 flight hours.
The plane seemed to be perfectly Ok and the cabin crew was professional and friendly.
No one expected the dramatic outcome that was in store for this flight.
On June 10, 1990, four crew members and 81 passengers boarded the aircraft. At 08:20
AM, the co-pilot performed a routine take-off, and British Airways Flight 5390 left Birmingham,
England, and headed toward Malaga, Spain. After some time, while the plane was still
climbing, Atchison handed the control over to the captain. Everything was going smoothly,
and the pilots relaxed in their seats, releasing their shoulder harnesses. Tim Lancaster also
loosened his lap belt. Thirteen minutes later, the plane had already
climbed to a height of 17,300 ft (5,273 m) and was over Didcot, Oxfordshire County. Just
as the cabin crew was preparing to serve meals, flight attendant Nigel Ogden was entering
the cockpit, and there was a loud bang. The passengers were terrified because they thought
there was an explosion. However, everything was both better... and worse. The real cause
of the chaos was the left windscreen panel of the cockpit. It had separated from the
fuselage of the plane and was blown away. Later, it was found somewhere in Didcot.
Meanwhile, the cockpit was quickly filling with condensation due to the difference of
temperatures outside and inside the cabin. But that wasn't the worst part. Decompression
that occurred when the window blew out made the air rush out of the cabin. And as you
may remember, the captain had already removed his lap belt. That's why the man was literally
ripped out of his seat and sucked out of the missing windscreen. Fortunately, his knees
got caught between the seat and the flight controls. His upper body was outside the window,
exposed to the incredibly forceful wind and staggering cold. The captain immediately passed
out due to the lack of oxygen. Recalling the accident later, one of the passengers
told the press that she had noticed a man who had been hanging out of the window, and
two other men and a woman had been holding onto his legs, trying to prevent him from
being sucked out. Little had the passenger known that it had been the captain of the
plane! It was the lightening-fast reaction of Nigel
Ogden that saved the captain’s life. He managed to grab the captain's belt and caught
hold of a chair to keep them both steady. After that, another flight attendant, Simon
Rogers, darted to the cockpit, strapped himself in the pilot's seat, and tightly grasped Lancaster's
legs. It allowed Ogden to take a break and bandage his hand, which was badly cut when
he was trying to pull the captain back into the cockpit.
Meanwhile, the passengers thought the plane was on fire and started to panic. The cockpit
door was sucked inward and collided with the control console, blocking some parts of it.
As a result, the plane began to descend very fast. Debris, passengers' personal belongings,
and papers were flying around. People were screaming. Luckily, co-pilot Atchison managed
to put on an oxygen mask, inform the passengers about the accident, and ask them to prepare
for an emergency landing. But there was a problem: the plane didn't
have enough oxygen for everyone on board. That's why the co-pilot was in a hurry to
descend to an altitude where the passengers and crew could breathe normally. After he
fulfilled this task, he immediately broadcasted a distress call. However, the wind created
deafening noise in the cockpit, so Atchison couldn't hear the reply from the air traffic
control. Nigel Ogden, who returned to holding the captain
after he tended to his wound, was getting tired. On top of that, he was steadily developing
frostbite. That's why Simon Rogers, along with the chief steward John Heward, replaced
Ogden to allow the man some rest. The worst thing was that the captain's body had moved
a bit further, and his head kept hitting the outside of the plane. But despite their assumption
that the man had already lost his life, the crew was still holding onto his body. They
were still clinging to him even when the plane made the emergency landing at the airport
of Southhampton. It was 08:55 AM local time, just a half an hour after take-off.
The passengers hastily disembarked with the help of boarding steps. Several of them, along
with the crew members, were taken to the hospital to be treated for shock, but were released
on the same day. Meanwhile, the emergency staff managed to carefully get the captain
down and rushed him to the hospital. To everyone’s amazement, Lancaster was alive! He had some
bad bruising, frostbite, and some fractures in his thumb, wrist, and right elbow, but,
otherwise, he was unharmed! Naturally, the man was in a state of shock, but he managed
to return to work in less than five months and didn’t retire from commercial piloting
until 2008. But as you can tell, this story could have
finished much more tragically if the crew hadn't reacted as urgently as they did. In
fact, Tim Lancaster owed his life to his crew members' fast thinking. For such a scary airplane
malfunction to result in neither fatalities nor any serious injuries is quite a feat!
It’s no wonder that sometime later First Officer Alastair Atchison, as well as cabin
crew members Nigel Ogden and Susan Gibbins, were awarded with the Queen's Commendation
for Valuable Service in the Air. Besides, in 1992, Atchison also received a Polaris
Award for his heroism and impressive skills. But why did the accident happen in the first
place? Investigators discovered that 27 hours before the flight, when the windscreen was
installed, 84 of the bolts used in the process were too small in diameter, and the rest of
the bolts were too short! Interestingly, the window which was replaced with the new one
had been installed with the use of incorrect bolts as well. Naturally, the miss-sized bolts
couldn’t withstand the difference in the air pressure between the outside atmosphere
and the cabin.
But the accident with British Airways Flight 5390 hasn't been the only accident when a
crew member barely escaped being pulled out of the plane. On May 14, 2018, a Sichuan Airlines
flight was heading from China to Tibet. When the plane reached the cruising altitude of
32,000 ft (9,753 m), the right windshield suddenly exploded with a deafening bang. And
the next thing Captain Liu Chuanjian knew, his co-pilot was being sucked out of the broken
window. Luckily, the man was wearing his seatbelt which pulled him back into the cockpit. Afterward,
it turned out that the co-pilot had only sprained his wrist and received several scratches.
But meanwhile, the plane experienced a loss of pressure and temperature drop. The captain
couldn't hear the radio, debris was floating in the air, equipment malfunctioned, and the
plane was shaking so badly, that it was hard to read the gauges. Oxygen masks dropped,
and then, all of a sudden, the plane was in a free fall for several seconds. But luckily
it managed to stabilize again. The captain, who was a former military pilot,
managed to regain manual control over the Airbus A319, and the plane made an emergency
landing at the airport of Chengdu. One more crew member had been injured, but other than
that, none of the 119 passengers or other crew members were hurt.
By the time of the accident, the plane had accumulated almost 20,000 flight hours since
Sichuan Airlines got it in July 2011. The windshield belonged to the original aircraft
and hadn't caused any problems before.
Have you ever heard about any other unusual emergency situations that happened mid-flight?
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