The British Airways Unscheduled Ejection Disaster of 1990 | Episode 84

You ever have a day at work so bad you wanted to climb, jump, or get sucked out a window. Hello, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. We'll talk soon. Safety goggles off and thanks for listening.