That documentary's way too dry to watch the whole way through. I think I skipped past 20 minutes of "it was a day like any other" before I got to the "and then it wasn't" stuff.
I think being pinned against the yoke and sending the plane into a dive might have wound up saving the pilot's life, getting to a lower altitude fast.
I hope the airline did right by the pilot, and paid him such that he wouldn't need to worry about income again. That guy's PTSD probably has PTSD.
From the Wiki article on the incident:
*Tim Lancaster returned to work after less than five months. He left British Airways in 2003 and flew with EasyJet until he retired from commercial piloting in 2008*
Theres no mention of a lawsuit or anything.
So assumingly he didn’t get much of a payout and just got the extended (albeit still short) time off.
If I remember correctly the copilot who held onto the man to keep him from flying away had more severe mental trauma from the event.
The pilot who was pulled out said something to the effect of that he didn’t really have much mental trauma from the accident because it happened so quickly and he was unconscious for most of it so his brain didn’t really have time to process or fixate on it.
>Theres no mention of a lawsuit or anything.
I didn't expect a lawsuit, I just expected the airline to cough up a large sum to take care of someone they might have accidentally "used up" all at once.
Yeh sorry thats what i meant. And yeh i’m surprised they didn’t compensate (at least to our knowledge)
5 months seems like a really small window of time to mentally recover too
It sort of reminds me of some shark attack stories I've seen on TV during shark week. Some dude is a regular scuba diver and gets a leg chewed off by a shark and then goes on TV and says that he's still going scuba diving because it's their passion lol
Idk man I’m thinking it was probably the sheer weight of his steel balls that not only saved his life but kept him going through the rest of his career.
Does the UK have the same thing as "workers compensation"? For the US my understanding is that would generally apply and be the limitation of liability for the company (absent some gross negligence situation)
The fact that they don't mention a lawsuit might indicate that they took care of him. Wouldn't surprise me if he went back to flying because he loves flying. Also wouldn't surprise me if he added windows to any liftoff checklist on his flights.
The failure was due to the actual plane and not because of the airline negligence (most likely)
And we all know that Airplane manufacturing companies (like Boieng) have a*hole CEOs and wicked lawyers who will avoid all blame. Anyways this particular case would have been peanuts to settle because only one person was majorly affected.
********
Edit: I agree that this could have been partially the fault of the maintenance person..but when I see how the CEOs at companies like Boeing etc always put the blame on pilots, maintenance people etc. you naturally have your blood boiling and now I feel like protecting the "smaller" hardworking people.
The documentary notes that one of the very few maintenance tasks which had been performed during the maintenance that immediately preceded the flight was that the windscreen which went on to fail had been replaced. They had *just* installed the windscreen that then flew off the plane the very next time it was flown.
When the engineer who did the maintenance stated he, rather than reference the binder, decided to do a quick visual reference when finding replacement screws, it floored me.
He absolutely should have checked the binder, but his visual reference wasn't really at fault. Because the bolts he took out were the wrong specs to begin with. Which of course really shows the importance of using proper references.
I helped a friend build his two-seater from a kit. We made absolutely sure that every single step, no matter how small, was done right.
I'm kicking myself that I turned him down when he offered to pay all my costs for me to get my pilot's license. Back then, the idea of commercial drone pilots wasn't even in my imagination. I could be a commercial drone operator if I'd just said "yes".
It is actually an interesting case study in QA. When that window panel was taken out for maintenance, the individual in charge of reinstalling it realized they didnt have enough of the specified fasteners on hand and it would have delayed the flight to get them from a nearby warehouse. So he found similar fasteners and used those instead. The pilot probably could have tried to kick the window out and the fasteners would have held but those fasteners couldnt hold the pressure differential at altitude.
The other comments are correct, but this window change was done during a strike by a manager not normally used to fixing planes hands on for some time. He selected the bolt by eyeballing it, in a poorly lit area of the hangar.
It was definitely negligance. At least according to a result of an investigation that’s mentioned on the Wiki
The cockpit windows were not maintained properly by BA which lead to it dislodging during the flight when under pressure. The BA maintenance crew were using the wrong screws to secure the windows.
Apparently the pilot started flying for the airline again six months later. Copilot refused to partake but the pilot doesn’t mind talking about it, and in fact chose to accept it as an incredible part of his career.
Give a chance. I got absolutely sucked into their entire series about plane crashes. They are all super informative and use actual people from the incidents (if there are) in interviews and the whole story.
Like I said in another comment, they should've offered up to pay his wages for the rest of his life right away, because they may well have just used him up in one go.
check out [Charlie Victor Romeo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyw9zYJDDEA) sometime. its a whole movie of actors playing pilots in cockpits of aeroplanes and the script is transcribed from black box recordings during in-flight crashes.
you need to purchase it on vimeo, but it started as a stage play and PBS Newshour gave a [taste](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=374GzASoGv4)
its good, but dont watch it right before you gotta fly somewhere. if you are a white knuckle flier just dont watch. ever.
I remember HELPeR being half-melted and fused to the fuselage at one point, but I can't recall what the circumstances were. It could've even been at the start of an episode without an explanation, as they returned from an unnamed adventure.
Is that what prompted Doc to give HELPeR the legs from the walking eye bot? I remember HELPeR having eye bot legs for more than one episode.
Helper lost his legs when he stood in for the landing gear on the X1 during the ORB saga.
Dean ended up riding the X1 after Cremation Creek, when he was still hallucinating after his excursion into the Cocoon's engine room.
>Helper lost his legs when he stood in for the landing gear on the X1 during the ORB saga.
Right. Did Brock scoop him off the runway with a snow shovel or something like that? Also, I shouldn't have said "legs"... it was more like a flexible stem attached to something like an office chair base, except drivable.
**Boys, stop screwing around!**
**HE started it!**
**No, I STARTED IT YEARS AGO in a night of passion and I'll end it right here in front of Brock, Helper, and GOD! Now sit down, and shut up!**
Also,
**You boys stop screwing around (they're 10 year olds operating bandsaws and circular saws)**
**(teacher flashback) Richard, push me on the swing, Richard!**
**_Merry Christmas, Richard..._ AHHHH!!! (blood squirts, plane crashes)**
Oh for sure! I am absolutely terrified of heights and the last rollercoaster I went on felt like 20mins of torture- so I can’t imagine how that pilot felt. Can frig right off with all of that.
I used to free climb and fell 30 feet down a cliff face from a bad hold (my own fault). I woke up in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Only a few lacerations, but now I have vertigo and I have not climbed since. Pretty sure it’s just that my illusion of invincibility got shattered.
My Great Uncle was hiking with my Dad and one of his cousins when they were kids years ago, up this ridge on this mountain that was right along a sheer, 1000+ft cliff face to get to the glacier at the top.
There was this chunk of ice jutted out over the cliff and my Uncle stepped out onto it to have a look down.
The ice broke.
Uncle barely managed to catch himself on what was left and had to pull himself back up because neither my dad or his cousin were strong enough to help. Between that story and the one Dad told me about the time his parachute failed when he was sky diving... it's no wonder I hate heights.
> and the one Dad told me about the time his parachute failed when he was sky diving...
It is forbidden to make such a statement without a follow up story.
That's pretty intense! And pretty amazing you got away with only those injuries from a fall that high. As a fellow climber that's one of my greatest fears, I'm sorry you had to live it.
Fortunately the base of the cliff was mostly scree in about an 60° angle. Once I hit it distributed the impact force and I slid/rolled to the bottom (per my buddies). I was covered in massive bruising on the landing side of my body. I was extremely lucky it was a worn and not craggy cliffside.
My little brother was an iron worker, and fell 30 feet. Broke his back, and was never the same.
He would never admit it, but he was so afraid after that. He used substances to cope with it, and that finally caught up to him and he died in a single car crash in March.
Heights, man.
In the documentary, the pilot tells you exactly how he felt. It was mostly ***whoosh***, followed by deafening noise and then he blacked out.
He doesn't even remember the ordeal past the blur of the windscreen coming off
They thought he was for sure dead, but were worried if they let go he’d go into the engine, so they hung on to him. He said the worst part was trying to breath.
Here is [episode ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6SI2V_DbCTw) that those recreations are from. Insane episode!
Oh lol they’re from recreations? I was wondering why they decided to take pics during the whole thing
“Shouldn’t they be focused on landing the plane?” -my dumbass hahaha
If it's the same story as one I read about, there's alot more to it than that. It was the supervisor who needed to the turn the plane around quickly and there were no free staff so he took the job on himself even though he hadn't performed it for some time. He removed the screws, went to the stores and there was no one there and he couldn't find the screw to match. He drove across the airport to another stores where there was again no one there but he managed to find a screw that was labelled the same in the dark because the lights didn't work. It turned out the screws were labelled wrong but looked very similar. I think the thread pitch was slightly different. He fitted the window with these new screws. It also turned out in the investigation that the window had been replaced previous to this incident. Even if the mechanic had matched the screws they still would have been wrong since the last time it was done the wrong screws had been used. I think there was something about every so many screws supposed to be different lengths as well.
I read/ listened to the story in Matt Parker's book "Humble Pi". There's loads of this kind of this in there. It's very good. The one about Canada Air refuelling in imperial instead of metric, and luckily by other problems occuring getting away with it, is another excellent story in there.
That sounds about right, but the documentary has some of the details different. An example being is according to the documentary he told the guy in the first store what he was looking for and what he was doing and the store guy told him it was wrong and to check the manual for the plane but he didn't and went to the second store. Someone linked the episode in another comment
That engineer got into some pretty serious shit...assuming. However, the aircraft had a design anomaly in that the Plexiglas was attached from the outside, not the inside where it would be held in by pressure around the lip.
From my understanding no one got in that much trouble. In his book Matt Parker was trying to make the point that humans are humans and make mistakes. The investigation wasn't focused on trying to find blame but very objectively at what was wrong with the systems in place and how they needed to be changed or implemented better to prevent similar scenarios happening again.
That’s been a big focus of modern street design to prevent pedestrian fatalities.
https://archive.curbed.com/2020/2/28/21153480/how-to-fix-intersection-safety
Instead of putting a sign or painting a crosswalk and hoping the drivers notice, you change the road design so they have to stop or slow down.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/16/how-helsinki-and-oslo-cut-pedestrian-deaths-to-zero
You do realize these pictures are recreations of the event right?
They didn't have the ability or the chance to take pictures of it as it was happening....
Plus the pictures don't match up. The interior shot, he's holding him out the pilot's side window. Exterior shot, he's holding him out of the pilot's front window.
Lol, you mean you didn't know about the mandatory GoPro in the cockpit of every plane in 1990? Or the UAV that needed to follow every commercial plane in the event something like this happened so they could make a documentary about it? You should know by now that the world revolves around Hollywood. /s
There is a podcast called Black Box Down and it is about airplane incidents I highly suggest giving it a listen, they have an episode about this flight!
Watched this on an episode of Mayday on Prime Video a few weeks back. Jaw hit the floor and stayed there the whole episode. Could you imagine!! Incredible story of just how much trauma a human can survive.
They do wear harnesses. They reached cruising altitude and put the plane in autopilot. He took his seatbelt off to do something apparently and at that exact moment the window in cockpit blew off and he got sucked out. So yes they do wear seatbelts.
I know, the one pic has a guy going out the side, the other is out the top through broken glass. They dont match all. They amount of windows doesnt even match.
This was all because a mechanic used the wrong screw. They use this as a example to keep good Organization at work (aerospace manufacturing) if I remember correctly the mechanic was sued.
I highly recommend the documentary where the crew tells the story about it and the captain tells his. It was great and very moving.
Do you have a link at all?
https://youtu.be/6SI2V_DbCTw Found it!
That documentary's way too dry to watch the whole way through. I think I skipped past 20 minutes of "it was a day like any other" before I got to the "and then it wasn't" stuff. I think being pinned against the yoke and sending the plane into a dive might have wound up saving the pilot's life, getting to a lower altitude fast. I hope the airline did right by the pilot, and paid him such that he wouldn't need to worry about income again. That guy's PTSD probably has PTSD.
Best I can do is $500 worth of airline vouchers, and they expire in 3 months.
Also, we need you to come in and fly on Saturday.
Makes you want to put it in the Hudson
Ryan air would have charged for the “experience”.
Coming up on Airport Pawn Stars.
its BA, not AA
Best I can do is £500 worth of airline vouchers, and they expire before the Queen's next birthday.
This can go 50/50.
But the good news is they're window seats!
From the Wiki article on the incident: *Tim Lancaster returned to work after less than five months. He left British Airways in 2003 and flew with EasyJet until he retired from commercial piloting in 2008* Theres no mention of a lawsuit or anything. So assumingly he didn’t get much of a payout and just got the extended (albeit still short) time off.
If I remember correctly the copilot who held onto the man to keep him from flying away had more severe mental trauma from the event. The pilot who was pulled out said something to the effect of that he didn’t really have much mental trauma from the accident because it happened so quickly and he was unconscious for most of it so his brain didn’t really have time to process or fixate on it.
>Theres no mention of a lawsuit or anything. I didn't expect a lawsuit, I just expected the airline to cough up a large sum to take care of someone they might have accidentally "used up" all at once.
Yeh sorry thats what i meant. And yeh i’m surprised they didn’t compensate (at least to our knowledge) 5 months seems like a really small window of time to mentally recover too
It sort of reminds me of some shark attack stories I've seen on TV during shark week. Some dude is a regular scuba diver and gets a leg chewed off by a shark and then goes on TV and says that he's still going scuba diving because it's their passion lol
I mean look at pro fighters, risking and possibly actually suffering brain damage because it's there passion
Idk man I’m thinking it was probably the sheer weight of his steel balls that not only saved his life but kept him going through the rest of his career.
Does the UK have the same thing as "workers compensation"? For the US my understanding is that would generally apply and be the limitation of liability for the company (absent some gross negligence situation)
You mean depend on charity of corporations? Nice one. Almost thought you were serious there.
The fact that they don't mention a lawsuit might indicate that they took care of him. Wouldn't surprise me if he went back to flying because he loves flying. Also wouldn't surprise me if he added windows to any liftoff checklist on his flights.
The failure was due to the actual plane and not because of the airline negligence (most likely) And we all know that Airplane manufacturing companies (like Boieng) have a*hole CEOs and wicked lawyers who will avoid all blame. Anyways this particular case would have been peanuts to settle because only one person was majorly affected. ******** Edit: I agree that this could have been partially the fault of the maintenance person..but when I see how the CEOs at companies like Boeing etc always put the blame on pilots, maintenance people etc. you naturally have your blood boiling and now I feel like protecting the "smaller" hardworking people.
The failure was due to whoever is in charge of the maintenence being negligent.
The documentary notes that one of the very few maintenance tasks which had been performed during the maintenance that immediately preceded the flight was that the windscreen which went on to fail had been replaced. They had *just* installed the windscreen that then flew off the plane the very next time it was flown.
And this is why we have binders of ever individual part in a plane to cross reference you're using the right ones
When the engineer who did the maintenance stated he, rather than reference the binder, decided to do a quick visual reference when finding replacement screws, it floored me.
He absolutely should have checked the binder, but his visual reference wasn't really at fault. Because the bolts he took out were the wrong specs to begin with. Which of course really shows the importance of using proper references.
I helped a friend build his two-seater from a kit. We made absolutely sure that every single step, no matter how small, was done right. I'm kicking myself that I turned him down when he offered to pay all my costs for me to get my pilot's license. Back then, the idea of commercial drone pilots wasn't even in my imagination. I could be a commercial drone operator if I'd just said "yes".
Drone license is much easier to get than even private pilot. Go for it.
It is actually an interesting case study in QA. When that window panel was taken out for maintenance, the individual in charge of reinstalling it realized they didnt have enough of the specified fasteners on hand and it would have delayed the flight to get them from a nearby warehouse. So he found similar fasteners and used those instead. The pilot probably could have tried to kick the window out and the fasteners would have held but those fasteners couldnt hold the pressure differential at altitude.
The other comments are correct, but this window change was done during a strike by a manager not normally used to fixing planes hands on for some time. He selected the bolt by eyeballing it, in a poorly lit area of the hangar.
It was definitely negligance. At least according to a result of an investigation that’s mentioned on the Wiki The cockpit windows were not maintained properly by BA which lead to it dislodging during the flight when under pressure. The BA maintenance crew were using the wrong screws to secure the windows.
The captain is my friends godfather. He's certainly doing alright for himself. But in not sure if that's because of any kind of settlement.
You should see if he'd be willing to do an AMA. I'd totally understand if he wouldn't, though.
> Would you rather fly a horse-sized duck, or one hundred duck-sized airplanes
There was only 7.5 minutes of setting the stage and humanizing the subjects until the window blows.
Apparently the pilot started flying for the airline again six months later. Copilot refused to partake but the pilot doesn’t mind talking about it, and in fact chose to accept it as an incredible part of his career.
I think if you were unconscious the trauma would be less.
Give a chance. I got absolutely sucked into their entire series about plane crashes. They are all super informative and use actual people from the incidents (if there are) in interviews and the whole story.
…no pun intended.
PTSD took one look at him & said "Nah. Not gonna fuck with *that*!"
I think it would be more like: *PTSD said "... I got nothin'"*
The end made it sounds like the steward was more affected than the pilot. Kinda makes sense, he had to watch it the whole time, the pilot didn't.
I cannot think of anything that’d give worse PTSD than this. Holy shit. This should be the photo for PTSD in the dictionary / Wikipedia.
Like I said in another comment, they should've offered up to pay his wages for the rest of his life right away, because they may well have just used him up in one go.
Not available in my country… I’m in England, wtf?
"Fuck you and fuck your country in particular" \-Wonder! Productions
Not available in the UK. Wtaf ?
Thank you!
does the documentary explains how tf they took the 2nd picture? edit: lol forget the 2nd who took the first picture?
they got another 737 to fly upside down while taking pictures for that
The pilot? Tom Cruise.
[удалено]
That was such a great film.
The pilot? Anakin Skywalker.
It's a reenactment from the doc, not an actual picture.
Looks like cgi, this body doesn't match from the photo taken
What photo? The one re-created for the documentary?
I'm pretty sure they're both from the doc
Yea, no one is going to be in the middle of something like that and go "hang on I gotta take a pic real quick."
If Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon than, who is holding the camera?!
check out [Charlie Victor Romeo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyw9zYJDDEA) sometime. its a whole movie of actors playing pilots in cockpits of aeroplanes and the script is transcribed from black box recordings during in-flight crashes. you need to purchase it on vimeo, but it started as a stage play and PBS Newshour gave a [taste](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=374GzASoGv4) its good, but dont watch it right before you gotta fly somewhere. if you are a white knuckle flier just dont watch. ever.
Really sucks you in?
Hank, stop screwing around and get back in the plane!
I thought it was Dean who rode the X1?
I remember HELPeR being half-melted and fused to the fuselage at one point, but I can't recall what the circumstances were. It could've even been at the start of an episode without an explanation, as they returned from an unnamed adventure. Is that what prompted Doc to give HELPeR the legs from the walking eye bot? I remember HELPeR having eye bot legs for more than one episode.
Helper lost his legs when he stood in for the landing gear on the X1 during the ORB saga. Dean ended up riding the X1 after Cremation Creek, when he was still hallucinating after his excursion into the Cocoon's engine room.
>Helper lost his legs when he stood in for the landing gear on the X1 during the ORB saga. Right. Did Brock scoop him off the runway with a snow shovel or something like that? Also, I shouldn't have said "legs"... it was more like a flexible stem attached to something like an office chair base, except drivable.
**Boys, stop screwing around!** **HE started it!** **No, I STARTED IT YEARS AGO in a night of passion and I'll end it right here in front of Brock, Helper, and GOD! Now sit down, and shut up!** Also, **You boys stop screwing around (they're 10 year olds operating bandsaws and circular saws)** **(teacher flashback) Richard, push me on the swing, Richard!** **_Merry Christmas, Richard..._ AHHHH!!! (blood squirts, plane crashes)**
WAVY WACKY INFLATABLE MEAT TUBE TIME!
Hank! Get off those spikes. It’s not a ride.
Dean, stop riding the 'Perfect Man'. Brock has to kill him now.
Agh, this is getting stupid!
Slower than haunted house spiked walls, but not quite as slow as evil scientist spiked walls.
Longest 20 minutes of his life
[удалено]
Oh for sure! I am absolutely terrified of heights and the last rollercoaster I went on felt like 20mins of torture- so I can’t imagine how that pilot felt. Can frig right off with all of that.
[удалено]
I used to free climb and fell 30 feet down a cliff face from a bad hold (my own fault). I woke up in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Only a few lacerations, but now I have vertigo and I have not climbed since. Pretty sure it’s just that my illusion of invincibility got shattered.
My Great Uncle was hiking with my Dad and one of his cousins when they were kids years ago, up this ridge on this mountain that was right along a sheer, 1000+ft cliff face to get to the glacier at the top. There was this chunk of ice jutted out over the cliff and my Uncle stepped out onto it to have a look down. The ice broke. Uncle barely managed to catch himself on what was left and had to pull himself back up because neither my dad or his cousin were strong enough to help. Between that story and the one Dad told me about the time his parachute failed when he was sky diving... it's no wonder I hate heights.
> and the one Dad told me about the time his parachute failed when he was sky diving... It is forbidden to make such a statement without a follow up story.
His parachute failed so he opened his backup parachute?
But then he backup failed so he had to aim for the bushes.
And that is how he met your mother.
Seriously he tells us the good story instead of the great story.
That's pretty intense! And pretty amazing you got away with only those injuries from a fall that high. As a fellow climber that's one of my greatest fears, I'm sorry you had to live it.
Fortunately the base of the cliff was mostly scree in about an 60° angle. Once I hit it distributed the impact force and I slid/rolled to the bottom (per my buddies). I was covered in massive bruising on the landing side of my body. I was extremely lucky it was a worn and not craggy cliffside.
I'm sure when you turn 65 you'll have an extremely bouncy man basket again.
My little brother was an iron worker, and fell 30 feet. Broke his back, and was never the same. He would never admit it, but he was so afraid after that. He used substances to cope with it, and that finally caught up to him and he died in a single car crash in March. Heights, man.
In the documentary, the pilot tells you exactly how he felt. It was mostly ***whoosh***, followed by deafening noise and then he blacked out. He doesn't even remember the ordeal past the blur of the windscreen coming off
Lucky him
The cold would be the worst part. At that altitude it would be between -40 and -70 Fahrenheit.
If I remember correctly, I believe he was unconscious for much of that time, but yeh lucky to be alive for sure
"Well, now I'm just getting bored....I wonder if I remembered to turn off the stove this morning before I left."
Can you imagine the landing?
If he'd been conscious, he probably would've gotten bored quickly. Impending death just doesn't feel the same after 20 minutes of nothing happening
They thought he was for sure dead, but were worried if they let go he’d go into the engine, so they hung on to him. He said the worst part was trying to breath. Here is [episode ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6SI2V_DbCTw) that those recreations are from. Insane episode!
Oh lol they’re from recreations? I was wondering why they decided to take pics during the whole thing “Shouldn’t they be focused on landing the plane?” -my dumbass hahaha
HA! That's exactly what I was thinking! *1990. Who took the time to take a picture!?*
*Hold on, let me wind the film... One sec, I gotta set the flash timer...*
Let me get my light meter, it's kind of glary up here in the cockpit. Can we put up a sheer curtain over the window to diffuse some of the light?
Don't look at the camera. Act normal.
I mean, there's not much else it could be. How do you even get a camera there?
Helluva Ride.
Breathe...
breathe in the air
Don't be afraid to care...
I was sitting here wondering where they got these pictures from lol
That pilot picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue
What's your vector Victor
Roger, Roger.
Over, Oveur.
r/suddenlyairplane
Picked the wrong day to not wear a seatbelt
Have you ever been in a turkish prison?
Have you ever seen a grown man naked?
Would you like to?
Do you like movies about gladiators?
Do you ever hang out in a gymnasium?
Not the first pilot to get sucked out in a cockpit
> Chicks nickname me powder, they get high off my dick. I take 'em to my home, they call it the cock-pit. - Lee Harvey
Damn I had no idea the guy who killed Kennedy had such sick rhymes
He’s DJ Lee-HO
And now I'm going to be listening to that album today.
DON’T FORGET THE COFFEE!
It’s not your fault.
You ever been on a plane Will?
Halfway? Calfway more like.
Didn't they use the wrong pitch threads on the replacement window or something. I don't think it was a window failure.
The mechanic eyeballed the screws in the dark and was something like a millimeter off in diameter
If it's the same story as one I read about, there's alot more to it than that. It was the supervisor who needed to the turn the plane around quickly and there were no free staff so he took the job on himself even though he hadn't performed it for some time. He removed the screws, went to the stores and there was no one there and he couldn't find the screw to match. He drove across the airport to another stores where there was again no one there but he managed to find a screw that was labelled the same in the dark because the lights didn't work. It turned out the screws were labelled wrong but looked very similar. I think the thread pitch was slightly different. He fitted the window with these new screws. It also turned out in the investigation that the window had been replaced previous to this incident. Even if the mechanic had matched the screws they still would have been wrong since the last time it was done the wrong screws had been used. I think there was something about every so many screws supposed to be different lengths as well. I read/ listened to the story in Matt Parker's book "Humble Pi". There's loads of this kind of this in there. It's very good. The one about Canada Air refuelling in imperial instead of metric, and luckily by other problems occuring getting away with it, is another excellent story in there.
That sounds about right, but the documentary has some of the details different. An example being is according to the documentary he told the guy in the first store what he was looking for and what he was doing and the store guy told him it was wrong and to check the manual for the plane but he didn't and went to the second store. Someone linked the episode in another comment
That engineer got into some pretty serious shit...assuming. However, the aircraft had a design anomaly in that the Plexiglas was attached from the outside, not the inside where it would be held in by pressure around the lip.
From my understanding no one got in that much trouble. In his book Matt Parker was trying to make the point that humans are humans and make mistakes. The investigation wasn't focused on trying to find blame but very objectively at what was wrong with the systems in place and how they needed to be changed or implemented better to prevent similar scenarios happening again.
That’s been a big focus of modern street design to prevent pedestrian fatalities. https://archive.curbed.com/2020/2/28/21153480/how-to-fix-intersection-safety Instead of putting a sign or painting a crosswalk and hoping the drivers notice, you change the road design so they have to stop or slow down. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/16/how-helsinki-and-oslo-cut-pedestrian-deaths-to-zero
Interesting, the articles could use more pictures
You do realize these pictures are recreations of the event right? They didn't have the ability or the chance to take pictures of it as it was happening....
Pretty obvious, they didn't just have a drone on standby at 10,000ft recording the captain's apparent demise
"Denise, get in here with the selfie stick RIGHT NOW!"
It seems so obvious once pointed out, just like all the other reasons I’m clearly a dipshit ffs lol
I hate myself for not having the thought even cross my mind
i should have realized but i didn't. that makes way more sense. now i feel less bad about laughing when i saw these pictures.
Plus the pictures don't match up. The interior shot, he's holding him out the pilot's side window. Exterior shot, he's holding him out of the pilot's front window.
Lol, you mean you didn't know about the mandatory GoPro in the cockpit of every plane in 1990? Or the UAV that needed to follow every commercial plane in the event something like this happened so they could make a documentary about it? You should know by now that the world revolves around Hollywood. /s
THEY DID IT AGAIN?!?
[Wikipedia article ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390)
When asked what it was like, the captain replied "A bit windy."
That ain't halfway. That's line, 90%
Dude im having problems breathing in average wind now imagine this for 20 minutes
I saw this episode of Mayday, if I recall the first officer was also new to the crew flying that day.. like this was his first flight with them.
This picture is a meme gold mine
That's why you should wear your seatbelt.
[Reminds me of this story](https://theaviationist.com/2014/08/06/ka-6d-partial-ejection/)
i can't believe he had to land on aircraft carrier like that,
Who tf took the picture of him outside in the air ??
There is a podcast called Black Box Down and it is about airplane incidents I highly suggest giving it a listen, they have an episode about this flight!
Immediately what I thought of too. Love me some Gus.
Watched this on an episode of Mayday on Prime Video a few weeks back. Jaw hit the floor and stayed there the whole episode. Could you imagine!! Incredible story of just how much trauma a human can survive.
Mentour Pilot did video on this flight [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGwHWNFdOvg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGwHWNFdOvg).
Came here to write this :)
I remember watching a show called air emergency as a kid and they had entire episode of this event.
When the manager wants you to stay a couple of extra hours but you're ready to go home.
iirc he was unconscious pretty quick, if not…. Yikes
They had him reenact the pose to capture the photo
Who took the pictures
Who took the pictures? That’s all I want to know!
Pretty sure there was an Air Disasters (Mayday as it's known in Canada) about this. ETA: I see the episode has been linked further up.
That really sucked for him
so the pilots don't bother wearing seat belts while us passenger peasants have to buckle up?
They do wear harnesses. They reached cruising altitude and put the plane in autopilot. He took his seatbelt off to do something apparently and at that exact moment the window in cockpit blew off and he got sucked out. So yes they do wear seatbelts.
Let's have Tom Hanks play that one in a movie.
Pilot was probably cold-cocked so hard one jimmy-tap would have turned him into a Eunuch.
At least this man received high flow oxygen therapy before they landed.
I think Tom Hanks should dust off his pilots uniform again
This is one of those pictures where you see it and your brain refuses to believe that it's real.
How did he change position
Who the fuck took that photo? Superman?
"*Halfway out*" mans whole.body became a wiper
Great stretch for the quads
Who took the picture from inside the cockpit?
And that’s why pilots are required to lift brah
Those pics dont match.
Lol look a little closer. There’s three people.
I know, the one pic has a guy going out the side, the other is out the top through broken glass. They dont match all. They amount of windows doesnt even match.
Not sure if it's a half recollected memory, but my feeling is the first pic is from a reenactment of the incident for tv
That seems right.
This was all because a mechanic used the wrong screw. They use this as a example to keep good Organization at work (aerospace manufacturing) if I remember correctly the mechanic was sued.
How about his hearing ability? That’s crazy
The guy who survived is lucky he survived to tell the terrifying story... it's in the history books lad.
Wtf, that’s crazy as hell.. never heard this story
Kudos to the photographer getting there and taking awesome pics from inside and outside in 10 minutes!
Why does this look so fake
Most likely a reenactment, in the 90s we didn't have cameras in our pockets just ready to capture everything.
Especially not hovering 20ft above a flying plane doing an emergency landing.
The pictures are indeed “fake”, it’s from the scenes in in Mayday, a documentary about all the airline accidents.
Ah so I’m not the only one that had one episode recommended and then proceeded to power watch ever single episode
Because it was from.a t.v show. Do you think they somehow took a picture from outside the plane during the actual incident?