British Airways pilot was sucked out of cockpit window during flight but lived
Just under 15 minutes into his BA flight from Birmingham to Malaga, two of pilot Tim Lancaster’s cockpit windows shattered. The pilot was violently torn from his seat and sucked out the window.
The 1990 incident occurred at a whopping 17,300 feet high as the plane was travelling over Oxfordshire.
The sheer force of the decompression blew the plane’s cockpit window from its hinges but quick thinking from one flight attendant helped to save the pilot’s life.
Nigel Ogden was almost knocked to the ground by the door but rushed to grab Lancaster’s legs before he flew out the window.
He told the Sydney Morning Herald: “I was just stepping out, with my hand on the door handle, when there was an enormous explosion, and the door was blown out of my hands.
In the unlikely event of an emergency, air passengers are usually told to use the “brace position”.
Passengers should bend as far forward as possible and place their hands on the back of their heads.
“I thought ‘My God, it’s a bomb’. I whipped round and saw the front windscreen had disappeared and Tim, the pilot, was going out through it, he had been sucked out of his seat belt and all I could see were his legs.”
The flight attendant jumped over the plane’s control column and grabbed the pilot around his waist.
He added: “His shirt had been pulled off his back and his body was bent upwards, doubled over round the top of the aircraft.
“His legs were jammed forward, disconnecting the autopilot, and the flight door was resting on the controls, sending the plane hurtling down at nearly 650 kmh through some of the most congested skies in the world.”
Although Nigel was doing his best to keep Tim in the plane, frostbite had started to loosen his grip.
Luckily another flight attendant, John Heward, came to the rescue and grabbed the pilot by his belt.
Nigel said: “I thought I was going to lost 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 six feet long.
