One Tough Flight

If you have flown in a commercial airplane, you can picture the pilot, the stewardesses, and the flight attendants clearly.  You probably see the pilot as a heroic figure, the stewardess as clean and attractive, and the flight attendant as efficient and hard working.

Your first image of a flight attendant probably didn’t include someone you could describe as heroic.

Well, not in this story.

——————————————

About 7 a.m. on June 10, 1990, flight 528 took off from Birmingham, England and headed toward Málaga, Spain.  There were 81 passengers and six crew members aboard.  Captain Tim Lancaster held the pilot’s seat and, from all reports, was quite a capable flyer…until about half-an-hour into the flight.

The aircraft gained altitude until it reached around 17,300 feet.  The pilot then locked the autopilot on and he and the co-pilot released their shoulder harnesses and loosened their seatbelts to make themselves more comfortable.  It was time to relax for most of the flight.  The crew began to serve drinks to the cabin’s occupants.

Suddenly there was a loud BOOM! That’s when the explosion happened.

——————————————

As the flight was passing over Dicot in Oxfordshire, the cockpit’s left window screen suddenly exploded, followed quickly by the one next to it.  The fuselage depressurized instantly and filled with a mist.  But something much worse happened too.

Pilot Tim Lancaster was sucked up from his seat and out the hole where the window had just been.

One of the stewards instantly leaped into action.

——————————————

At the moment of the explosion, flight attendant Nigel Ogden was working on the cabin door.  With the blast, the door was blown off its hinges, nearly knocking him down. 

He later said, “I whipped around and saw that the front windscreen had disappeared, and Tim was going out through it.  He had been sucked out of his seatbelt and all I could see were his legs.  His shirt had been pulled off his back, and his body was bent upwards, doubled over around the top of the aircraft.  I jumped over the control column and grabbed him around the waist – to avoid him going out completely.”

Ogden refused to release his grip, even though he was being pulled toward the window too.  Another attendant, John Heward, leaped into the cockpit and grabbed Ogden’s belt, trying to hold him back.  Another attendant strapped himself into the pilot’s chair and grabbed Heward.

In the movies the hero hangs on to save the day but, in real life, muscles fatigue and no one can hang on forever.  As Ogden’s muscles began to fail, other of the heroic flight attendants stepped in to take turns holding the captain’s ankles.

Poor Captain Tim Lancaster was pinned to the plane by the force of the wind flowing around the craft.  Commercial aircraft average about 500 mph, causing an airflow that no human can resist.  Lancaster tried to turn so he could breathe more easily but was unable and soon lost consciousness.  Records show that the temperature outside the plane was approximately 1° Fahrenheit, his body was subjected to a wind chill factor of, get this, -60°.  Folks, that’s 92° BELOW FREEZING!

——————————————

The flight attendants who were not actively keeping the pilot’s body from being blown away made an announcement to alert the passengers to get into their emergency positions in case the plane went down.  Yes, there was a definite chance that none of them would make it out of the experience alive.

Co-pilot Alistair Atchinson took over operation of the plane, at the same time alerting air traffic control, “Mayday.  Mayday.”  He was eventually able to make contact with the safety team on the ground, explaining that the captain was sucked almost completely out of the plane and, “I believe he is dead.”

Flight attendant Ogden hung on despite the horror he was witnessing.  When he first grabbed Lancaster, “”His legs were jammed forward, disconnecting the autopilot, and the flight door was resting on the controls, sending the plane hurtling down at nearly 650kmh through some of the most congested skies in the world.  I thought I was going to lose him, but he ended up bent in a U-shape around the windows.

“His face was banging against the window with blood coming out of his nose and the side of his head; his arms were flailing and seemed about 6 feet long.  Most terrifyingly, his eyes were wide open.  I’ll never forget that sight as long as I live.”

The brave flight attendants hooked arms to keep anyone from being sucked out of the plane.  Despite the very real possibility that they would die, they tenaciously hung on to the pilot’s body.

——————————————

The dedicated stewards held on as co-pilot Atchinson regained control of the airplane and brought it down to land safely at Southampton Airport at 7:55, nearly a half-hour after the ordeal began.

The ground crew rushed to help, noticing the bloodstains and pieces of clothing inside and outside of the cockpit.

Then came the announcement: pilot Tim Lancaster was still alive.

He was rushed to Southampton General Hospital, where he was treated for fractures of his right arm and wrist and a broken left thumb, as well as frostbite, bruising, and shock.

——————————————

Not only did Lancaster survive his ordeal, he returned to flying for the same airline five months later.  He continued to fly until his retirement in 2008.

An investigation found that the failure of the cockpit windows was due to maintenance errors.

So, traumatic and dangerous as the accident was, no one was killed.  About the worst you can say about it is that it was horrible.

Hey, at least I resisted the urge to say it sucked…or maybe I just did.

Oops.

——————————————

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AT THE UPPER RIGHT.

IT’S FREE!

You will ONLY receive notifications when I post new entries to my blog.

Go to the top of the right hand column where it says, “SUBSCRIBE TO BLOG VIA EMAIL”.  Fill in your email and hit the “Subscribe” button.  You will receive a verification email.  Please confirm that you want to subscribe by clicking, “Confirm Follow” and you will be set!  Thanks!

It doesn’t seem to work from a cell phone, only a computer.  I don’t know why.  Sorry.  If there’s a problem, send me your email address and I’ll sign you up.

——————————————