a bac oneelveen departs biringham for malaga spain with 87 people onboard. the crew are good friends especially the flight attendants but the first officer alistar atchinson doesn’t know them as he is from manchester and drove down that morning the captain is tim lancaster. the walkaround doesn’t find problems but the plane is just out of maitenence where they fixed the windscreen. the takeoff is normal. the pilots have the plane on autopilot and the flight attendants ask the pilots about drinks alls normal at this point until 17000 feet when the windscreen falls off with an explosion sucking the captain out and a white fog forms. the first officeer declares mayday but the control collom is pushed forward forcing a dive from the captains legs. the flight attendants try and keep the captain from falling out of the plane. it feels like a tornado in the cockpit but the response from atc to his maydays isn’t heard. attichinson has a bit of control and puts the plane into a steep decent due to oxygen starvation possibility and to avoid other traffic. the speed is very fast. the captain is now on the side of the plane the 3 male flight attendants are now holding on while the female one is trying to calm the passengers although one of them is hurt and has to stop the chief flight attendant stops leaving only one holding on but the fo tells the last one to keep holding on incase hes alive and to keep him from flying into the engine. the plane finally gets to hear from atc and requests gatwick but southhampton is a better airport in terms of distance but he will be worried about the runway length which is not gurranteed to be long enough (nor is bourmoth which is suggested) the fo thinks hes dead the weight is a worry as well. they land safely in southhampton airport the only other injury is the first flight attendant who went to the rescue of the captain but thats not all the captain survived his ordeal so there are no deaths on ba5390 which is amazing and on the ground in southhampton is when he came back to concisious it was clear the first officers flying saved him. the investigation doesn’t have much to go on other than the mising windscreen he talks to maitence people in biringham who worked on the plane the night before the accident who initally doesn’t give much info until a call reveals the bolts where too small on the windscreen which meant it came off even though the original ones where also too small these were even smaller by just a small bit and even though he asked for help they didn’t have the right size and despite looking it was just a small difference that made all the difference the work finished at 6am just in time. they use a psychologist to figure out what he was thinking but this leads to the investigation report not being accepted by british airways (as it never had been done for human factors).
next time a 9 minute ordeal when a propellers destroyed and than a fight for survival for a first officer.
Harrison’s world 