Editing A Pinch of Thought 3-26-18 (section)

==== Seat Belt Fastened at All Times ====
There weren’t many old BAC One-Elevens still flying in 1990, but one of them, British Airways 5390, was en route from Birmingham to the Spanish island of Malaga on June 10. It was a sunny Sunday, with 81 happy beachgoers aboard, when the entire pilot’s-side windscreen blew out as the One-Eleven climbed through 17,300 feet. The captain, Tim Lancaster, was almost instantly sucked out the opening—he’d removed his shoulder harness after takeoff and loosened his lapstrap—but fortunately the backs of his knees jammed against the top of the windscreen frame while his feet were caught under the yoke of his control column. Steward Nigel Ogden, who had just entered the cockpit, grabbed Lancaster by the legs while the first officer got the airplane under control. 

Ogden was on the verge of being dragged out as well when a second steward reached the cockpit and secured him with a strap from the captain’s shoulder harness. By this time, Lancaster had slipped sideways from the roof of the cockpit, and his bloodied head was flailing against the left side window. The crew assumed that he was already dead. “His eyes were wide open,” Ogden recalled. “I’ll never forget that sight.” Lancaster was actually comatose, his systems shut down as a result of the incredible shock and the excruciating cold of the high-speed slipstream. A second steward eventually had to relieve Ogden, who was frostbitten and losing his grip, and by the time the airplane landed at Southampton, England, Lancaster was being held only by his ankles. He in fact survived with a fractured arm and wrist, and his first words after being pulled back into the cockpit were “I want to eat.” (“Just like a pilot,” Ogden reportedly said.) It was soon determined that an overworked mechanic had used undersized bolts on 84 of the windscreen’s 90 hold-down fittings.