On June 10, 1990, one of the most incredible events in commercial aviation took place. On that day, the pilot Tim Lancaster and the first officer on board Alistair Atchinson were to meet British Airways Flight 5390, which would be heading from Birmingham, in the United Kingdom, to Malaga, in Spain.
At 07:20 local time, the BAC 1-11 model aircraft, registered as G-BJRT and known as British Airways “The County of South Glamorgan”, took off from Birmingham and thirteen minutes later it had already made a 5,000-metre ascent. A few minutes later, when the onboard catering service began to circulate through the corridors, one of the windscreens on the pilot's side came off violently.
The difference in pressure produced an uncontrolled decompression that sucked Captain Lancaster out and, miraculously, left him stuck with his torso out, being held only by his legs. At the moment of detachment, the cockpit was filled with a dense fog caused by the oversaturation of the air, the cockpit door came off and hit the controls and papers and objects began to fly generating a terrifying scenario.
However, Nigel Odgen, the flight attendant, soon grabbed Lancaster's belt to secure it, while John Heward and Simon Rogers secured the loose objects. Once the situation was relatively controlled, with the crew members holding the legs of their captain, the plane descending at full speed as a result of decompression, panic in the passenger cabin due to the rumble and the notorious change in the environment, co-pilot Atchinson regained control of the aircraft and sent a signal of mayday to start an emergency descent.
Meanwhile, the surcharge Susan Prince reassured passengers and explained that they had started an emergency landing. In the cockpit, Odgen was holding his captain from his waist while he received bursts of seeing ice cream, -17 degrees Celsius, which began to freeze him. At this time Rogers replaced him and took over holding Lancaster.
Later, the entire crew would admit that in those moments of terror they had left the pilot for dead, however, they never gave up saving Lancaster's body, none of them knew that they were actually saving his life.
Humanitarian and ethical considerations aside, letting Lancaster's body go could have resulted in a catastrophe, as it could have damaged a wing of the plane or one of the turbines. But eventually, Rogers held out until Atchinson managed to make an emergency landing in Southampton, on the south coast of England, 22 minutes after the windshield came off.
Miraculously, the plane will land smoothly. None of the 83 passengers were injured, Odgen was treated for frostbite, cuts and bruises on his arm, while Lancaster, almost inexplicably, suffered only fractures in his right arm and hand, frostbite, bruising and concussion.
The pilot would say, once recovered, that he remembers the incident and being sucked into the windshield, he even said he saw the tail of the plane until he passed out and has no more memories of the incident until he woke up in the hospital.
Subsequent investigations determined that when the windshield was installed 27 hours before the flight, 84 of the bolts used had a diameter of 0.026 inches, just over half a millimeter. They were too small. The remaining six had the correct diameter but 2.5 millimeters, but they were short. It turned out that the previous windshield had also been fitted with incorrect bolts, so when the maintenance manager on duty came to replace the screws, he simply did it in a similar way, without reference to the official maintenance documentation. Why did he do it? Because it had time pressure: the plane was due to leave shortly.
The entire crew was recognized by British society and even by Queen Elizabeth II herself for the valuable service they provided in the air, while the co-pilot received the Polaris Prize, the highest award associated with civil aviation, awarded by the International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations, in recognition of his ability and heroism.
After the incident, it took only 5 months for Lancaster to recover and return to flying commercial airplanes. He continued working at British Airways until 2003, when he switched to easyJet until his retirement in 2008. Meanwhile, Atchinson went a little further, and worked until his 65th birthday, in 2015.
The story of Tim Lancaster is one of the most incredible in commercial aviation, not only because Lancaster survived, when everything indicates that under these conditions it was very likely that he would lose his life, but also because of the heroism of the crew and co-pilot who did not surrender, held his captain and managed to land the aircraft without no passengers were hurt.
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