Horror in the skies over England
On June 10, 1990, a British Airways BAC 1-11 aircraft took off from Birmingham to sunny Malaga at 7:20 am. Onboard there were 87 people (81 passengers and 6 crew members). There was no sign that in the 13th minute of the flight there would be 86.5 of them. The liner climbed to a height of 5273 meters. The pilots unfastened their seat belts, and the passengers in the cabin crunched cookies. The idyll was interrupted by a loud bang. This fell off the left windshield in the cockpit. The aircraft commander was immediately sucked into the hole.
Captain Timothy Lancaster would have flown out the window entirely, but a fat ass stuck in the doorway saved. The upper part of Timothy admired the beauty of the English South, the lower part - helplessly swinging his legs in the cabin.
Flight attendant Nigel Ogden reacted instantly and grabbed Lancaster. The PIC's body hitting the left engine threatened to disaster. They also did not drag the man inside - otherwise the complete depressurization of the cabin and trouble. In general, the damage from the dropped glass made it possible to count on a favorable outcome: the door to the cockpit was knocked out with a stream of air, and the control panel was covered with a layer of debris.
While the flight attendants ran through the cabin and reassured passengers, co-pilot Alastair Atchinson took control of the situation. The man turned on the autopilot and began to descend. Meanwhile, Ogden was completely weak and frozen. The number of Captain Lancaster inside the plane was gradually reduced. He fell out of the cabin so much that the captain's unblinking face appeared in the adjacent side window. Then two more flight attendants came running to help Ogden. They were sure that they were holding a corpse by the legs.
Atchinson, through the wind and the crew's swearing words, heard the landing clearance. 25 minutes after the start of the terror, the plane with a live plug in the window landed safely in Southampton.
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The gag was indeed alive. Captain Lancaster suffered severe frostbite, broke his left arm and bruised. Ogden, who had been holding on to the captain all this time, dislocated his shoulder and froze his face. There were no other victims.
The culprit was found quickly. Shortly before departure, a British Airways employee changed the same windshield. 84 bolts out of 90 turned out to be smaller in diameter, all the rest were shorter than necessary. The mechanic did not check the technical documentation and selected the bolts by eye. Naturally, the glass could not stand it.
Captain Lancaster was put in order. After 5 months, he again sat down at the helm of the plane. He flew with British Airways until retirement (55) and then pursued his flying career with EasyJet.