The Amazing Tale of a British Airways Pilot Who Hung On Outside a Flying Plane for 20 Minutes!

The Amazing Tale of a British Airways Pilot Who Hung On Outside a Flying Plane for 20 Minutes!

Some real-life stories are so unbelievable they sound like movie scripts. If you saw this one on screen, you’d probably say, “No way that could actually happen.”
But it did.

At 17,300 feet above the English countryside, with freezing air rushing past at over 300 miles per hour, a British Airways pilot was violently sucked out of the cockpit window of his plane.

And somehow—against all logic, physics, and expectation—he survived.

This is the astonishing true story of the British Airways pilot who hung on outside a flying plane for 20 terrifying minutes.

A Routine Flight… Until It Wasn’t

On June 10, 1990, British Airways Flight 5390 was scheduled to fly from Birmingham, England, to Málaga, Spain. It was a short, routine flight—one the crew had flown many times before.

Captain Tim Lancaster, a highly experienced pilot with over 11,000 flight hours, was in command. His co-pilot, First Officer Alastair Atchison, was beside him. Four cabin crew members and 81 passengers filled the aircraft, a British Aerospace 1-11 jet.

Nothing seemed unusual as the plane climbed smoothly through the clouds.

Then, about 13 minutes after takeoff, everything changed in a single explosive moment.

The Window That Changed Everything

At approximately 17,300 feet, without warning, the left cockpit windshield blew out.

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