The British Airways Unscheduled Ejection Disaster of 1990 | Episode 86 - Doomsday: History's Most Dangerous Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You ever have a day at work so bad you
wanted to climb, jump, or get sucked out a window. Hello,

(00:23):
and welcome to Doomsday Histories Most Dangerous Podcast. Together we
are going to rediscover some of the most traumatic, bizarre,
and inspiring, but largely unheard of or forgotten disasters from
throughout human history and around the world. On today's episode,
we answer the question, is twenty twenty five in fact

(00:47):
as awful a time to fly as it seems. We'll
find out why you've never seen four hundred mile per
hour wind exfoliation SPA treatments before, and we will compare
a commercial airliner to the and submersible that imploded not
that long ago. And if you were listening to this
on Patreon, you would learn how a distrust of doctors

(01:08):
can make you want to saw off your own fingers.
You'd hear this whole jank sitch broken down for gen Z.
You'd learn why you shouldn't melon ball your eyes out
of your head if they get too cold, and you
would meet the coldest person to ever live and her
dramatic journey from river corpse to successful radiologist. This is
not the show you play around kids or while eating

(01:31):
or even in mixed company. But as long as you
find yourself a little more historically engaged and learn something
that could potentially save your life, our work is done.
So with all that said, show the kids out of
the room, put on your headphones and safety glasses, and
let's begin. People ask me if I think it's still

(01:51):
safe to fly, and I say, uh, good, And you
how do you even answer a question like that? If
you've listened to the show for any amount of time,
you know my main interest is keeping people safe. But
if you've listened to the news for any amount of time,
you know everything that you're hearing definitely sounds like I
just said, so what happened? But people do ask my opinion,

(02:15):
and sure enough, I'm going to rationally explain all of
this in a way that makes you feel better about
having to leave your house. And I already know you're
going to be listening to this fifteen minutes after some
bet sheds both wings and craters into an orphanage. So
I apologize. As I started writing this. One hundred and
seventy two people are walking on the wing of a

(02:38):
seven thirty seven at Denver International while the other side
of the plane is on fire. So I don't want
to just come out and say that twenty twenty five
has been a bad year for aviation. Yep, here we are.
By the time of my writing this, nearly three hundred
people have died in over one hundred air travel accidents
so far this year. There was that Sikorski Blackhawk helicopter

(03:02):
that blitzed the American Airlines Flight fifty three forty two
over Washington that killed sixty seven, which is literally the
deadliest American air disaster in almost twenty four years. Didn't
even have time to absorb the impact of that before
a lear Jet air ambulance cratered into a Philadelphia street,
killing a six year old girl or a mom and

(03:23):
five others. It was an unbelievably sad occasion, made shockingly
awful because this happened only forty eight hours into the
news cycle of the first one. Then there was that
Bearing Air flight that killed ten on the way to
Nome in Alaska. Then there were those two planes that
collided at Marana Airport outside of Tucson, killing two. Then

(03:45):
there have been all these near miss runway incursions, like
a very famous one in Chicago midway last month where
a Southwest Bowing seven thirty seven eight hundred had to
bounce after a smaller jet cross their runway on landing.
And it's hard for me to forget the Delta flight
that arrived upside down at my home airport here in Toronto.

(04:06):
I have a full list in front of me of
everything that's been happening so far this year, and it
packs an awful lot of distrust into less than three months.
And it's easy to connect the dots between gutting America's
flight infrastructure and the corresponding spike in the number and
severity of air disasters. Layoff started with people responsible for

(04:28):
installing and inspecting and maintaining air traffic control systems and
air traffic controllers and support and safety inspectors. The word
is they're trying to curb overspending, which is a little
like saying we don't inspect braking systems on trains anymore
because we hate having to pay for it. This is

(04:49):
not a political podcast. America could be run by, and
one day may very well be run by the unfrozen
head of Walt Disney attached to the animatronic body of
Abraham Lincoln from the Hall of presidents, for all I
care facts are not liking a thing doesn't make it
any less real. But don't complain about who set the

(05:10):
fire when the priority is keeping people safe as a result.
So we're not pointing fingers now. That said, when that
Delta flight crashed here last month, my first unconscious thought
was whoa America. You might not be giving the strongest
flight safety vibes anymore, but I still do so Kindly
keep your flaming plane parts on your side of the border.

(05:30):
And so yeah, if you've listened to a single news
item from any country in the world, it's not hard
to feel like America lost the thread around air safety.
And there has been a ton of debate around the
connection between cutting air safety and airliners backflipping out of
the sky. The people who made the cuts are quick
to say that nowhere traffic controllers or critical safety personnel

(05:52):
got the axe, But all those people who used to
do those jobs who are now lining up in unemployment
offices respectfully disagree. Air traffic controllers have been screaming that
the FAA was understaffed way before any of this happened. Well,
that and the crushing stress of long, irregular hours holding
thousands of lives in your hands, plus maintenance issues, cost cutting,

(06:16):
and just insufficient oversight. You could wear out a finger
pointing at all the problems. And compared to cars, trains,
and boats, air travel remains the statistically safest form of travel.
It has the lowest fatality rate for passenger mile, the
highest being bicycles. Your odds of dying in a car
accident in the United States are about one in one

(06:39):
hundred and one. Your odds of dying in a plane
crash are about one in eleven million. And even when
plane crashes do occur, over ninety five percent of people survive.
So if you were looking for that one thing that's
made it feel so safe over the years, well, oh,
I don't know. Maybe the FAA, the Federal Avation Administration,

(07:01):
developed modern air traffic control to manage aircraft movement and
prevent a little something we used to call mid air collisions.
The FAA created modern air traffic control, and not just that.
They gave us everything everything from in flight seat belts
to next gen air transportation systems that replace older radar

(07:22):
systems with satellite based navigation and surveillance. What else do
they do? They manage flight crew behavior inside the cockpit
and the institut it's tricked inspection and maintenance schedules for
everything outside of it that care about everything from runway
lights to runway incursions. The entire world looked to the

(07:43):
American FAA for guidance on safety and best practices. There
is no way to say how many lives have been
saved because of their legacy. And you say, well, that's nice,
but the question remains, should I be flying here? What
I'll tell you about that. If you compare stats against
this time last year, we actually have less crashes in

(08:07):
twenty twenty five. However, we're trading that for a higher
body count. Increased media coverage just makes it feel like
accidents are happening more often because twenty twenty five's crashes
are more dramatic. Also, the controller at Ronnie Reagan Washington
National Airport was doing the job of two people the
night that American Airlines flight smashed into that black Hawk helicopter.

(08:30):
So no, by my estimation, we're only a few months
away from air traffic controllers standing on runways signaling planes
with flares to follow the flaming debris of other planes
to safely guide them in for landing. It worked in
Diehard too, and we're all going to learn to accept
it as the new normal way quicker than we should.

(08:52):
The question is is flying still safe, which really begs
the question has flying ever been safe? There have always
been accidents and extraordinary incidents. Sometimes the roof of a
plane is ripped off and it still lands safely without it.
Other times a plane might plummet straight into the ground,
killing everyone on board terribly because a single light bulb

(09:15):
went out in the cockpit. Now those are two stories
that we haven't covered before, and with any luck, they
will not get back burnered behind an avalanche of shiny
new disasters over the next handful of years. Today we
are going to be doing a little flying, and I'm
very sorry about that. However, to calm your nerves before takeoff,

(09:38):
let me tell you we will be flying in British
airspace today, not American. We'll be flying from rainy old Birmingham,
England to the much sunnier and drier Costa Del Sall
Airport in Malaga, Spain. So you know, since we're spending
so very little time at Birmingham. Birmingham from a historian's
point of view, is amazing. It's the birthplace of heavy

(10:01):
metal music. J R. R. Tolkien, Cadbury's chocolate gas, street lighting,
the mass spectrometer, and the steam engine that helped launch
the Industrial Revolution. Sadly, we'll be spending all of our
time here on a runway facing out of town. We
will be flying British Airways flight fifty three to ninety

(10:22):
on board a BAC one eleven. It was a British
short hauled jetliner developed by the British Aircraft Corporation back
in the nineteen sixties to compete against the American Douglas
DC nine. They called it the cheap of the skies.
It had a T shaped tail configuration with rear mounted engines.
You don't see that a lot anymore, but they used

(10:43):
to design them that way to make the wing surfaces
smoother and reduce cabin noise. One eleven's were dependable, they
were easy to maintain, and they had a fantastic safety record.
Piloting today will be Captain Tim Lancaster alongside First Officer
Alistair Atchison. Both were experienced and very well respected pilots.

(11:06):
Captain Lancaster had been a commercial pilot for twenty one
years First Officer Atchison was relatively junior, with only seven
years of experience, but as we will see, he is
a quick study. He had just joined this team from Manchester.
The rest of the Stewarts and flight crew had been
working together for years. It was a regular route for them.

(11:28):
So we are in good hands. And according to British
Air we are on board the world's favorite airline, and
they say that because they carried more international passengers than
any other airline at the time. But considering how uncomfortable
flying can be, making that claim can be a little
like saying fully makes the world's favorite catheter. Don't say

(11:50):
you don't learn things on this show. Before we even board,
Copilot Atchison will be doing a visual check around the
exterior of the aircraft, you know, kicking the tires and stuff.
While Captain Lancaster reviewed the maintenance logs from the date
before and everything seemed up to snuff. They filled the tires,
replaced a windscreen, gaster her up and handed over the keys.

(12:12):
Nothing to take up A four photo about our story
takes place on the morning of June tenth, nineteen ninety
and this will be an easy flight, less than three
hours in the air In fact, a lot of the
eighty seven souls on board had taken this route before.
Fourteen of them fell asleep. During the in flight safety segment,
the crew was relaxed and jovial, and the passengers were

(12:34):
in a good mood too. About fifteen minutes into the flight,
our glide profile puts us around seventeen thousand, three hundred
feet on the way to our assigned altitude of twenty
five thousand feet. Our call sign for the day will
be Speedbird fifty three to ninety. And this flight began
as peacefully as any you have ever seen. The tea

(12:56):
was steeping. Captain Lancaster even saw his house, and the
GM role rules are you're supposed to keep your seat
belt fastened tightly until you're at least ten thousand feet up.
Captain Lancaster switched to the autopilot and removed his shoulder
straps for comfort. The pilots wear a full five point
harness that covers their lap, junk and shoulders, and it's

(13:17):
always a pleasure to strip out of that thing as
soon as you can. Oh and for the passengers, well,
they were just starting to serve breakfast. Could this flight
be any better? Well? You're asking the wrong guy. I
concentrate primarily on how things tend to worsen, and in
this case, in a split second, a strange, airy squeak appeared,

(13:39):
almost immediately replaced by a deafening explosion that tore through
the cockpit without warning. The left windshield in front of
Captain Lancaster was blown out of the airplane. It lifted
out and shot away with explosive force like a bullet.
The calm of the cockpit was immediately replaced with a
deafening rush of wind. A larbell screamed to be heard

(14:02):
over the wind entering the plane as fast as they
were flying. The passengers felt the thud of the explosion
in their organs, and the cabin filled with a thick
white fog from the sudden drop in air pressure. Speedbird
fifty three ninety began to shudder heavily, then leaned forward
and immediately began dropping from the sky. Passengers were convinced

(14:23):
that a bomb had gone off. What they didn't know,
What they never in a million years could have guessed,
was that the windscreen had blown out, and the force
of the sudden suction was so intense that Captain Tim Lancaster,
who I will remind you just loosened his safety belt,
was immediately sucked out of a seat and slurped headfirst
out the window by the pressurized air leaving the aircraft.

(14:46):
His upper body was blown entirely out of the plane.
Only his legs remained on board, tangled or anchored around
the control column, which pulled it forward, canceling the autopilot
and dropping the plane into an uncontrollable descent, which only
increased the speed and airflow. To say that this had
evolved into unimaginable chaos really does a disservice to the

(15:09):
terms unimaginable and chaos. Moments before this happened, flight Attendant
Nigel Ogden just entered the cockpit. So imagine going about
your day thinking of a lovely spot of tea, and now,
without a moment's thought or hesitation, you are flying across
the cockpit of a plane and grabbing onto the captain's
legs and belt for dear life. The door to the

(15:31):
cabin had been ripped from its hinges by the decompression,
and now it was laying across the controls, pressing into
the throttles, while ogged In battled to keep his grip
on the captain, desperately fighting the strength of the wind,
which was threatening to rip the captain out the window entirely.
First Officer Atchison welded himself to the controls. He screamed,

(15:52):
made a for air traffic control, but with the absolute
tornado of wind and noise in the cockpit. If they
were responding, he had no idea. And you know how
wind chill works, right? You ever stick your head out
of a car doing over one hundred while they were
traveling at four hundred miles or over six hundred kilometers
an hour, picking up speed as they plunged. So imagine

(16:14):
being blasted by hypothetical category fourteen hurricane force winds that
feel like minus fifty celsius or negative sixty something fahrenheit.
As Ogden gripped the captain, his hands begin to freeze
and his arms felt like they were being torn from
their sockets. Fighting against the noise and the wind, Atchison
managed to control their descent, thankfully. Mercifully, the other flight attendants,

(16:38):
Simon Rodgers and John Hayward, ran to take over for Ogden,
who was by now completely physically exhausted. Rogers grabbed the
captain by the legs, while Heyward, seeing the door resting
against the throttles, began hoofing at it until it broke
into pieces, finally freeing the controls. They even managed to
finally free Captain Lancaster's feet from around the control Heyward

(17:01):
then wrapped his arm through a seatbelt, grabbed onto Rogers,
and helped anchor them into the aircraft. It was one
thing if they lost the captain. It would be quite
another if they had two people hanging out the window
and Atchison couldn't lift a finger to help them. He
couldn't even talk to them. He was completely on his
own to correct their descent and get them onto the

(17:22):
ground in one piece. Their most immediate threat was the
lack of oxygen, and it was the whole reason that
Atchison had continued their mad descent to get them down
to the point where oxygen equipment wasn't going to be needed.
He had been thinking quite clearly about not making things
so good before long. This was an older plane, and

(17:43):
he knew that there wouldn't be enough breathing apparatus for
everyone on board, only enough for about eighteen out of
eighty seven people, and if he ended up using his
own supply, His mouth would be blocked and he wouldn't
be able to communicate with ground control or the rest
of his crew, not that he was really able to anyways.
With the hurricane force winds ripping all around them, they

(18:05):
were having a terrible time. But what about the captain.
The decompression that he experienced was brutal. However, he remained
conscious as he exited the aircraft. In less than a second,
the cock it went from pressurized calm to a violent vacuum.
His shoulders, his arms, and his upper spine all absorbed

(18:28):
the torque of being twisted out through the opening. From
the outside of the plane, Captain Lancaster appeared to be
laying on his back, with his arms dangling overhead behind him,
and a streak of blood forming on the fuselage behind
his head. His knees were locked in place, bent over
the window frame, but of course we know that is
only by the mercy of his crew giving everything they

(18:50):
have to keep him from leaving the aircraft. Altogether, the
total number of souls on board, including crew, for the
duration of the flight was now eighty six and a half.
From what we know, the Captain's body was experiencing a
force equivalent to about one point seven metric tons of
drag pulling him out. They feared that if he was

(19:10):
sucked out, his body could destroy the leading edge of
a wing or wreck a flight surface like a giant
bird strike. And what if he just tore free of
the knees, entered one of the engines and brought down
the whole plane. And in saying all of that, I
refer to his body, because they had no way of
knowing whether he was alive or dead at this point.

(19:31):
His face was beaten and raw from the subzero wind,
and his unblinking eyes were open, but no one was home.
And all this while Atchison is preventing their descent from
turning into a tight spiral while being absolutely hosed by
freezing gale force winds. And I should mention, during all
of this, pouring my rough calculations on wind noise, it

(19:52):
might have been as loud inside the cockpit as it
would have been standing close to the engines at full throttle,
around one hundred thirty decibels. And I should mention during
all of this, they were descending through some of the
busiest air traffic lanes in the world. So yeah, on
top of everything else going on, the risk of slicing

(20:14):
through another plane in a mid air collision was also
a very real possibility. They held onto Lancaster's legs, determined
not to let go, regardless of how hopeless the situation
might have seemed. They dove below eleven thousand feet in
just two and a half minutes, and now that they
could finally breathe, Atchetson leveled them out and slowed their

(20:37):
speed to one hundred and seventy miles or two hundred
and seventy five kilometers an hour. The thing is, of course,
now that the wind had finally lessened, that captain began
sliding and smearing down the side of the aircraft. His
face was slapping against the side windscreen with his eyes
wide and unblinking. Ogden was convinced that he was dead

(20:59):
and begged they their men to take over holding them.
By now he couldn't even feel his arms, which were
bloody from the experience. He didn't realize he'd also dislocated
his shoulder and gotten frostbite on one of his eyeballs.
Imagine the faces of the passengers as Ogden made his
way back through the cabin, cradling his dead, frozen, bloody arms.

(21:22):
They were all show of hands, pretty sure the captain
is dead. Meanwhile, in the cockpit, the men managed to
hook the captain's feet behind his seat and latched onto
his ankles. Atchison was finally able to hear air traffic
control over his headset, and he explained the situation. Now,
picture the look on the face of the air traffic

(21:43):
controller speedbird thirty seven to ninety on approach, no window,
dead captain, stressed crew, impossible scenario. The nearest airport was
in Southampton. Now, pilots don't love flying into new air
pace port's unassisted, and Atchison had never been to Southampton.

(22:04):
I hear Southampton and I think of it as more
of a nautical port of call. It's where the Titanic
departed from. And I think it's actually where the Mayflower
departed from, too, not that Atchison could tell me. All
of his charts and maps and diaries had blown out
the window a long time ago, and his direct superior
was staring at him from outside of the plane like

(22:26):
a Halloween decoration, and they all feared the worst. They
feared that he was already dead, or at least his
brain was, and they were just holding onto his body.
So you're on a short haul flight across Europe when
you see your pilot waving at you from outside the plane,
but he's doing it with dead eyes, and before you

(22:49):
can tell anyone, he pirouettes past your window and disappears.
Would you know what to do well? This kind of
disaster is unusual once in a lifetime of a situation here,
and if there is a takeaway from it, it is
this keep your seat belt on. Sure, seats can be uncomfortable,

(23:09):
and the lap belt was not designed with comfort in mind,
but you are trading momentary discomfort for the ultimate I
told you so. In the event of anything from unexpected
turbulence to a full roof removal of the plane, I
always wear mine, mostly because they won't let me wear
a helmet, and I'm already too tall to be comfortable

(23:31):
no matter what I do, so I just wear mine.
I've already told you my story about flying to Calgary
and such awful roller coaster conditions that I actually prayed
to the Lord to crash our flight so that if
we survived, we could take a bus the rest of
the way around the world. About sixty five thousand flights

(23:51):
experienced turbulence every year, and about five thousand of those
experienced severe turbulence, you know, like smearing your face across
the bulk with your teeth, flying around the cabin kind
of turbulence and not pointing fingers, never pointing fingers. But
all of this the injuries the teeth preventable with seat belts.

(24:12):
Turbulence can be terrifying, and most travel destinations are not
the kind of place you want to have complex dental
reconstructive surgery. It's not unusual for most passengers to think
that turbulence means the plane's about to crash. But if
you ever found yourself at the cloud rodeo, please try
to remember that modern planes are built to take it.

(24:36):
Your pilot isn't panicking about it. They're probably more annoyed.
It's never a bad idea to just be aware of
any unusual noises coming from the fuselage, you know, any
squeaking or bumping or vibrations or general straining noises that
might pre tell the removal of a wing or other
structural failure. And if you did, please let the cabin

(24:59):
crew know. I'm not trying to scare you. I'm more
of a fan of letting the cabin crew do that
when they are screaming. Brace Bryce, Bryce rule of thumb
for everyone on this planet. You're not really taking care
of anyone if you can't take care of yourself first.
You think I'm talking about your overall emotional state, but
in this situation, let's keep it a little simple. I'm

(25:21):
talking about oxygen masks. You're probably not below eleven thousand
feet while cruising, and that makes breathing a chore. If
the cabin decompresses, depending on your altitude, you've maybe got
fifteen or thirty seconds of useful consciousness left, provided you
don't get your mask on. After that, you're just a confused,
floppy sack of meat trying to remember how your hands work.

(25:45):
So try to remember to put your mask on first
while you still have useful brain function. I'd start to
tell you about crash positions, but a your cabin crew
will cover that and be at the rates that plane
seats keeps thinking, you just do what you can. I'm
not six foot seven or anything, but at best I

(26:05):
could probably just rest my chin on the seat in
front of me. And you do not know how you
are going to react in a disaster. I'm going to
ask you to try to stay calm. I'm going to
ask you to try to keep your seat belt on.
I'm going to ask you to be ready to mask
up and just keep your ears open. But if you
don't remember any of that, I want you to try
to remember that you are going to be okay. Well,

(26:29):
you are statistically ninety five percent likely to be okay.
Air Traffic Control decided it was best that whatever landed
at Southampton was met by every piece of emergency equipment
that they had. Remember, Flight thirty five ninety only just
took off, which means it's already pretty fully fueled and

(26:53):
heavy as hell, which makes for some difficult landings. Dumping
fuel wasn't an option on this model aircraft, so they
were going to need a long ass runway in hopes
of not exploding their tires or running off the end.
Atchison was hoping for twenty five hundred meters, or more
than eight thousand feet, but the longest they had at
Southampton was only eighteen hundred meters, or closer to six

(27:17):
thousand feet. Flight fifty three ninety had descended and was
now flying closer to five thousand feet, so they weren't
going to get a go around or an alternate airport. Normally,
a difficult landing would be handled by a crew of
two working in conjunction to go through every safety check
and bring it in by the book. Well, like everything else,

(27:39):
that book had blown out somewhere over streetly and a
captain had been slapping helplessly against the side of the plane,
unable to catch it. For Atchison, this was going to
be the most difficult landing of his career, of anyone's career, really,
and to his immense credit, Atchison was able to touch
the plane down and bring it to a full stop

(28:02):
without leaving the runway. Once they had finally stopped, Adjison
took off his headphones and had a small emotional collapse.
He had done something unparalleled in the history of flight.
All of them had. The plane was quickly enveloped by
emergency vehicles and the captain was removed. His body had

(28:24):
been assaulted. There was the incredible physical violence of being
forced through a sharp metal hole, the torture of being
stretched and pulled by wind so strong, fast, and cold
that his cause of death was a coin flip between
hypothermia and hypoxia. Firefighters lowered him from the plane and
paramedics loaded his corpse into an awaiting ambulance, and that's

(28:49):
when his eyes opened. Not only didn't he die, he
lived now. After being deprived of oxygen for that long,
about twenty minutes, they think he should have registered as
an expired vegetable. However, cold induced slowing of his brain
metabolism likely saved his life. They call it cerebral hypometabolism.

(29:12):
Captain Lancaster's brain cooled so fast in that wind, and
that extended his timeline for survival by reducing his brain's
need for oxygen. It was days before Captain Lancaster regained
any kind of useful consciousness, and when he did, he
was able to share his side of the story. He

(29:33):
remembered everything that happened to him, and he explained that
the only reason he was still alive was because he
was able to turn his head away from the jet stream,
which actually allowed air to just pass into him rather
than blowing straight up his nostrils and blowing the lungs
and sinuses out of his body. He knew where he was,
He knew that he was flying, and he could see

(29:55):
the back of the aircraft behind him. Engines and all
after that, he couldn't remember anything. Captain Lancaster walked away. Well,
he was stretchered away with cuts and fractures, a dislocated shoulder,
blood coming out of his ears and his nose, and
random facial trauma from repeatedly Irish headbutting the fuselage, and

(30:19):
then pushed away on a stretcher with a broken arm
and a wrist and a thumb and bruising and frostbite
and shock. I did try to calculate the odds of
anyone recreating this scenario and surviving, and it came close
to one in seven hundred and eighty eight trillion. He
had only been minutes from death, and if not for

(30:39):
Atchison's decision to bring the craft down as quickly as
possible to get to useful air outside, which also happened
to super cool his brain, he would or should have died.
So what happened, Well, investigators didn't have a lot to
start from. The windscreen was missing, and the cockpit inside
was a bit of a disaster. Let's just say I

(31:03):
wouldn't want to be working at the Birmingham maintenance hangar
right about now. The windscreen in question had just been
replaced the night before this flight. Amazingly, they were able
to trace the location of the windows blowout and found
the windscreen in a field in the Oxfordshire countryside near Didcot.
When you think of yourself riding in a plane, it's

(31:25):
a little like riding inside a balloon. Air pressure's increased
inside the balloon, so you remain at a constant, comfy
equilibrium regardless of what's happening outside your balloon or in
this case plane. This of course puts a certain amount
of pressure on the inside of the fuselage. It's what
makes that balloon analogy so great. Windscreens are fitted from

(31:48):
the inside, and all that internal pressure helps keep them
in place, kind of like how the door to your
place swings outwards. It makes it harder for wind or
feet to kick it inwards. The frame literally holds it
in place. Now, on the BCA one eleven, the wind
screens were held in place by thirty bolts, all bolted

(32:09):
from the outside of the aircraft, and that means the
window is only as strong against the cabin pressure as
the bolts that are holding it. Reminds me of this
submersible I've heard about not too long ago, where it
was where window bolts and a metal housing provided all
the clamping and ceiling force for their window. And I

(32:30):
remember that sub blue inwards while the BAC one eleven
blew outwards. And even though this had never happened before,
there is always a first time for everything. Planes have
to pressurize before, but usually it's because of a failure
of a cargo door, not losing a window and a

(32:50):
cockpit window at that that was just all so weird.
When they found the wind screen, they also found the
bolts that held it in place. Like I said, and
that is when they quickly realized the incredible truth of
what had happened. Most of the bolts holding the windscreen
in place were the wrong size. When questioned, the man

(33:12):
in charge of the maintenance on flight thirty five ninety
provided the old bolts for investigators to examine and compare
to those found with the screen. If they had been defective,
it would mean a potential issue for any and all
BAC one eleven's flying around the continent. He ever, tried
to eyeball the difference between a screw with a five

(33:34):
sixty force thread and a six sixty force thread. Nah,
it's almost impossible to do without some kind of lab
equipment of Jeweler's loop at least, and certainly not while
displayed over the hood of a plane twenty feet off
the ground. The mechanic had an awkward time of trying
to get the old bolts out and the new ones in.

(33:55):
He'd been kind of laying on scaffolding and sort of
hanging over the nose of the plane as best he could.
When the one to eleven had been brought in for maintenance,
the hangar had been full, so it kind of got
pushed into the space, sort of edged in against a
door in a way which made the wind screen hard
to reach. You ever tried to screw something in at

(34:16):
an odd angle and find yourself dropping your tools, Well, yeah,
it was one of those situations. But this did not
make him a lazy or a poor mechanic. In fact,
the existing bolts in the plane had been there already
for four years, and since they were replacing the screen
as a whole, he conscientiously thought that it would be

(34:36):
wise to switch out all the bolts. However, instead of
going to the parts catalog and identifying the exact bolts
he needed, he eyeballed the replacements against the existing The
parts manager on staff at the time told him the
proper bolt size he needed, which was different from what
he had in his hand. The manual called for a

(34:58):
to eleven eight d bolts, but the bolts that were
already installed had been eight to eleven eight seas and
he decided it was preferable or just easier, to just
replace what was already installed, kind of a if it's
not broke, don't break it kind of thinking. And his
eyeball match had been remarkably good, but he matched up

(35:20):
the replacement screws, which were already the wrong size. We're
talking about the difference of zero point zero two six
inches that's zero point sixty six millimeters in diameter, which
made it just over two hundreds of an inch too
narrow for the job, and they were the wrong length
for the bolt too, but they'd been strong enough to

(35:42):
hold the screen in place for the past four years
without issue. At their cruising altitude of seventeen thy three
hundred feet, the pressure pressing against the window would have
been around four hundred and fifty pounds of force per
square foot, and each panel was almost four square feet,
so that is almost a ton of force pressing against it.

(36:04):
All that pressure was looking for a weakness and it
found it in those bolts. The mechanic did the work
to the best of their abilities given what they knew
about the engineering and work, to complete the job on time.
After finishing the repair, they signed off on the work
and the plane was handed over to Captain Lancaster and
his crew. And it was such an unusual occasion that

(36:27):
investigators did something that they had never done before. They
brought in an actual psychologist to help interview the mechanic
to see if a misfiring brain played any role in
the disaster. And they do do this for pilots sometimes,
but never for mechanics. And what they learned was that
mechanics have a lot to do, they had to do

(36:48):
it all overnight and getting it done on time was
the obvious priority, so little tricks like eyeballing parts just
became normal. The shift maintenance made responsible for installing the
incorrect screws had not followed British Airways policies. They eventually
found the local Birmingham Airport management responsible for not directly

(37:11):
monitoring shift maintenance managers working practices. It wasn't a damning report,
I mean They also recommended that staff with prescription glasses
should be required to wear them while doing maintenance. Not
exactly a bloodbath of severed heads, What each member of
that crew had done was astounding. Flying a commercial airliner

(37:33):
without a front wind screen is not the kind of
think that you could possibly train for in a simulator. Well,
actually that's not entirely true. They have actually done decompression
training in training tanks. They do it so pilots won't
be surprised out of their skulls if it ever actually
happened to them in real life. Of course, not every

(37:54):
pilot gets that training, and one thing they do is
hand out clipboards to test your bility to make good think.
After that, and the results not for make so good
think at all. Thinking and reaction times go out the window,
and eventually you just pass out. Atchison's performance that day
was nothing short of superhuman. And on that same note,

(38:18):
stewards are not typically hired for their ability to brace
against thousands of pounds of force for extended periods of time.
The incredible thing after the incident, about five months later,
Captain Lancaster was once again flying the Friendly Skies, which
teaches us what that bills still got to get paid.

(38:40):
Members of the crew were awarded the Queen's Commendation for
valuable service in the air. Atchison had also been awarded
a Polarist Award for Outstanding Airmanship. Captain Lancaster received two
Guinness World Records, one for Worst day at work and
another for the Least Comfortable flight Experience. The aircraft itself

(39:04):
was repaired and stayed in service until two thousand and two.
Tim Lancaster left British Airways in two thousand and three
and flew with easy Jet until he finally retired in
two thousand and eight. Atchison left British Airways to join
Channel Express and then Jet two until he retired in
twenty fifteen. Ogden returned to work, but retired in two

(39:27):
thousand and one for mental health reasons. Turns out, holding
what you think is a dead body for an extended
period while being blasted with freezing winds until the skin
on your arm cracks off and you get frostbite on
your eyeball can lead to PTSD. British Airways Flight thirty
five ninety popped a lens and barfed out its own

(39:49):
pilot because a long line of procedures to prevent it
were ignored, chalk it up to cost cutting and staff
shortages and misplaced confident. Even if there had just been
a second set of eyes to check the work, this
episode might not have happened. Fast forward to today, and

(40:11):
echoes of this oversight failure loom over us all and
scare a senseless The US Federal Aviation Administration, which has
been considered the gold standard for aviation safety, is now
being asked to do more with less. And if history
is any guide, cutting oversight does not save money. It

(40:33):
just defers cost. Sure, you save money in the short run,
but you more than makeup for those savings in lives
and equipment and in reputation lost. More reliance on airlines
policing themselves is a recipe for increased crashes. British Airways
Flight fifty three to ninety is a testament to quick

(40:56):
thinking and teamwork. It's also a story of imaginable resilience
and courage, and to this day, the British Airways unscheduled
ejection disaster of nineteen ninety remains probably the most remarkable
survival story in the history of commercial air travel. So

(41:21):
bottom line, do I think air travel is less safe
than it's ever been before. Well, I feel like I
do things every single day way more dangerous than flying.
I'm four hundred and eighty times more likely to die cooking,
I'm six hundred times more likely to die in the bathroom.
I'm twenty thousand times more likely to die tripping in
my living room, and almost thirty five thousand times more

(41:44):
likely to die on the stairs. So I try to
teach you that your safety is largely a mental exercise.
We worry way more about sharks and planes than our
hair dryers and toasters, but we shouldn't. We got it
all backwards, whether you realize it or not. You bravely
face off against danger in the most mundane ways possible

(42:06):
every single day, and flying's no different. You're one hundred
thousand times more likely to die on the ride to
the airport than on a plane. Just breathe, then eat
that sandwich. I'm not talking about the in flight meal.
And I've told you about all that on the last show.
And always try to remember nothing is ever as bad
as it is in your head before doing it. And also,

(42:29):
it's never the flying that'll get you. It's the landing
and If you're still worried about making one of those
landings that don't end up using the entire runway, why
not ask what your second favorite podcast would do to
try to make you feel better about it, and consider
becoming a supporter of the show. It really helped me
fulfill my dream of doing this full time, and if

(42:52):
you and a few thousand of your friends could spare
a buck or two, you would really be helping keep
the show and frankly me going before. I value about Patreon.
If you're into it but aren't looking for a whole relationship,
you can visit buy me a Coffee dot com slash
doomsday to make a one time donation. And those of
you who do, I see you and I appreciate you.

(43:14):
I myself think getting episodes a little early, with no
sponsor interruptions and with additional ridiculously interesting material in each
new episode is worth it, and if you agree, you
can find out more at patreon dot com slash Funeral
Kazoo quick but heartfelt shout out too, Billy g Josh Evans,

(43:35):
Amanda Sanders, Sam Collins, Elizabeth Lazik, Andy and Mike Dodgson
for helping support me on Patreon Again. I can't say
this enough. There is no show without you, guys. So
those of you who do support pat yourselves on the back.
You can reach out to me on Twitter, Instagram, and
Facebook as Doomsday Podcast, or you can fire an email

(43:58):
to Doomsday Pod at Genas. Older episodes can be found
wherever you found this one, and while you're there, please
leave us a review and tell your friends. And as
long as I am making heartfelt shoutouts, I would like
to shut out Jinx, a beautiful, beautiful Nova Scotia duck
tolling retriever and former Nova Scotian provincial canine living out

(44:22):
her retirement in Edmonton, Alberta with her dad, Rob Orton.
I've known Rob for a while now, and if words
were all it took to take away pain, then I
would make this the halfway point of the show and
continue from there. Jinks will live in your heart forever, Rob,
and I am sincerely sorry for your loss and for

(44:45):
everyone else, please hug your pets a little closer. I
always want to thank all my listeners, new and old,
for their support, and I want to pay it back
in kind. I also say that if you could spare
the money in had to choose. I ask you to
consider making a donation to Global Medic. Global Medic is
a response agency of Canadian volunteers offering assistance around the

(45:07):
world to aid in the aftermath of disasters and crises.
They're often the first and sometimes the only team to
get critical interventions to people in life threatening situations, and
to date they have helped over six million people across
eighty nine different countries. You can learn more and donate
at Globalmedic dot ca. On the next episode. The next

(45:33):
episode will be the greatest disaster of its kind in
human history. That said, it happens on US subway, and
I have a note here from the transit authority. They
would prefer that we call it an unscheduled service disruption Colgate,
it's the Great Baku Metro fire of nineteen ninety five.

(45:57):
We'll talk soon. Safety goggles off and thanks for listening.

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The British Airways Unscheduled Ejection Disaster of 1990 | Episode 86

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The British Airways Unscheduled Ejection Disaster of 1990 | Episode 86