In 1990, a large commercial plane was rapidly plummeting towards the ground below, with the plane's captain trapped outside the cockpit window as the terrified flight attendants desperately held onto this captain's legs. The only part of him that was still inside the plane, they were barely able to stop him from just being immediately ripped away by the intense winds they were really struggling and didn't know how much longer that they could hold on for.

To the horror, if he lost their grip on the captain, he would not only die. His body would likely be sucked straight into the plane's engine, killing everyone on board. To make matters even worse, as the plane's copilot was frantically trying to regain control over everything as soon as possible without his captain's help and guidance. Things weren't looking promising at all.

Before long, all of the passengers were instructed to prepare for an emergency crash landing. And what ended up happening was such an unbelievable story. It seems like it was taken straight out of a Hollywood movie. Welcome back, guys. My name is Andy Chang and this is the hidden Stories.

On June ten, 1990, British Airways Flight 539 took off from Birmingham Airport in England on its way to the city of Malaga, Spain. This flight started off like any other flight as the plane was gradually starting to ascend. The captain and the flight attendants on board whenever the routine safety instructions as usual and also as usual, many of the passengers were actually listening.

It was a commonly taken route that many of them were already familiar with. And since it was a really beautiful, sunny day outside as well. Everyone was just expecting and looking forward to having a very relaxed incident, free flight. At first that's exactly what this flight was like. Before long, the plane's captain, a 42 year old man named Tim Lancaster, had already calmly switched the aircraft into autopilot, allowing himself to take off a sort of straps and comfortably relax into the flight along with his passengers.

Since Captain Lancaster had been a commercial pilot for over 20 years, by that point, he was extremely familiar with flying. He was especially familiar with the model of the plane that he was flying that day. A, b, c, 111, which was known as the deep of the Skies for being a highly reliable, safe and easy to maintain aircraft.

As a result, his passengers were an extremely good hit, and the chances of something going wrong were extremely, extremely low. But around 30 minutes into the flight, when the plane was at around 17,000 feet in the air, and shortly after the cabin crew had just started preparing to serve the in-flight meal, everyone suddenly jolted as an extremely low thud, vibrated through the aircraft.

This thud was so strong and so intense that it sounded like a bomb had gone off. And it also physically shook some people in their seats. And before anyone could react without warning, the plane suddenly started rapidly plummeting towards the ground below. Almost immediately, a tense wait must begin to form within the cabin walls, as the air inside the plane was instantly decompressed and turned into fog.

As all of the passengers began to scream, panicking and desperately clinging on to their seats for dear life. One of the flight attendants, Nigel Ogden, frantically rushed to the front of the aircraft where the cockpit was to see what in the world had happened. But before he had even arrived, he immediately knew that something was terribly, catastrophically wrong.

The door to the plane's cockpit, which should have always been closed, had somehow been completely ripped off of its hinges and was now resting on some of the controls inside of the cockpit. As Nigel rushed inside as well, he was suddenly horrified. The very first thing he saw was Captain Lancaster, the man who was supposed to be piloting the plane, hanging halfway out of a hole that was now on the left side of the cockpit with his head and upper body pinned against the outside.

As it turns out, what had happened was everything had been going perfectly fine. And according to plan in the cockpit, when all of a sudden the windscreen panel right next to Captain Lancaster had somehow popped open, the immediate decompression that resulted had created a vacuum so strong that it had immediately ripped the cockpit door from its hinges. And it had also almost completely sucked.

Captain Lancaster out of the aircraft before he could even react. Extremely luckily, however, the captain's legs had gotten lodged in the control panel, which is the only reason why he hadn't been completely flung out of the plane already. But since Captain Lancaster's lower half was pressing up against the controls in such a way that he had disconnected the plane's autopilot, and he had also sucked the plane forward in a steep dove, while simultaneously increasing the plane's speed to nearly 400 miles per hour.

Their flight was now rapidly accelerating, straight towards the hard ground below, putting them at a very real risk of all dying on impact. As such, at the moment, Captain Lancaster's copilot, a 39 year old named Alistair Atchison, was desperately fighting to bring the plane back under control. Since Alastair was completely occupied with this and hadn't been able to help out Captain Lancaster at all, the flight attendant Nigel immediately rushed over to Captain Lancaster's side and grabbed the hold of his legs with just how fast the plane was plummeting.

The wind speeds outside the cockpit unimaginably strong, and at any given moment, the captain's legs could be ripped out of place, sending him flying out into the open sky to his death. Extremely lucky, though. Nigel was able to get there just in time to reinforce the captain's positioning and prevent him from being ejected from the aircraft. But as Nigel struggled, the cordon cut the man, Custer's legs in place, mustering up all the strength that he could.

He suddenly noticed, to a sheer horror, that the outside of the cockpit was now completely smeared with the captain's blood because of the brutal winds outside Captain. Then, Custer's head and body had been repeatedly slamming against the side of the aircraft. It had happened so many times by then that every time the captain's face hit the glass screen, his eyes would just remain wide open.

In a lifeless case, not even blinking. And since it was also completely freezing outside the cockpit, around zero degrees Fahrenheit because of the 400 mile per hour winds. Nigel was convinced the captain Lancaster was now dead. However, as two other flight attendants, John Huot and Simon Rogers, rushed over to Nigel side to help them hold the captain, since he was very quickly becoming exhausted and couldn't hang on for much longer.

The copilot, Alister, warned them not to let go of Captain Lancaster's body, even if he was dead. If the captain was let out into the open sky. There was a huge risk that his body would fly straight into one of the plane's engines, destroying it and dooming them all on the spot. As such, the flight attendants just kept desperately holding on to the captain with every last ounce of their strength, refusing to let him just fly away.

Soon, they managed to loop one of the cockpit seatbelts through the captain's legs, which gave them a nice anchor point and helped alleviate a lot of stress on there. But while they were struggling with this, Alastair himself was going through a whole separate world of problems and anxieties since their plane was suddenly plummeting through one of the busiest airspaces in the entire world.

He was terrified that they would accidentally collide with another plane, killing everyone on board both. However, as Alastair frantically tried to communicate and coordinate with air traffic control to make sure that they were clear. Although air traffic control could hear his cries for help, the first swarm and chaos going on in the cockpit made it impossible for Alistair to hear anything that they were saying to him.

As such, he had no choice but to just desperately hope and pray that they would be blessed with a stroke of incredible luck and managed to not hit any other planes on their way down. Although Alastair was also incredibly worried about the captain hanging halfway out of the cockpit and the dangers that he posed to the aircraft if he were to become dislodged and fly outside, since he was way too occupied with trying to control the plane already, he simply had no choice but to trust his flight attendants and believe that they would be able to keep the captain secure.

It just so happened to be his first day ever working with this specific crew, so he had no idea what they were like or whether they were even competent. Fortunately for him, however, they turned out to all be extremely capable individuals, even under such stressful conditions. By then, the flight attendants had collectively managed to calm all the passengers on board down a bit and then prepare them for a worst case scenario.

Emergency crash landing. In addition, shortly after the flight attendants had arrived to help out in the cockpit, they had managed to wrench the captain's feet away from the part of the control panel that he had been pressing up against. This allowed Alastair to finally regain control of the plane's speed and direction to his immense relief. But despite this, House actually decided to continue allowing the plane to plummet to the ground at 400 miles per hour, at least for a while longer.

Although this was a massive risk in his mind, it would help them rapidly descend past the altitudes with the highest likelihood of having any air traffic, giving them the best chance of not crashing into any other planes on their way down. Not only that, it would also help bring them down to a lower altitude where there was more oxygen as quickly as possible, greatly lowering the risk of anyone in the planes coming from the deadly oxygen starvation that can occur at higher altitudes.

Although Alastair was a bit worried that something would go wrong and he would lose control of the plane since he was also a highly experienced pilot, incredibly, everything worked out almost perfectly. He managed to get the plane down from 17,000 feet to 11,000 feet safely out of the congested airspace and low oxygen environment before finally reducing the plane's speed.

The amazing thing was, since Alastair was never supposed to have been the main pilot that day without the captain guiding him, he had basically been operating the plane entirely from memory, despite the enormous amount of stress and anxiety he had over him. With everyone's lives now suddenly in his hands, however, he had minutes to actually pull through and successfully regain control over the plane.

Unfortunately, though, he and the rest of the passengers aboard his plane weren't out of the clear just yet. After seven entire minutes of being entirely out of contact with air traffic control, Alastair could finally hear them clearly once again now that the wind speeds and volume had both gone a bit lower. But although this was a massive relief when he asked the traffic controller to direct him to the nearest airfield that he could perform an emergency landing at, he was told it was the Southampton airport around six miles away.

I was just heartsick. He had never landed at Southampton before. Normally, if this was the case for him to land there, he would have to have many different maps and tones of the foreign airport on him so that he would know where to go and how to avoid crashing into the numerous surrounding buildings and other aircrafts. Unfortunately, however, since all of the maps and totes that have been on board British Airways Flight five, 30, 90 had been blown out of the hole in the cockpit during their flight.

Alastair would basically have to go in and make this landing almost completely blind with nothing but the air traffic controller guiding him and making sure that he wouldn't accidentally crash. Although this was an extremely dangerous and risky thing to do, Alistair really didn't have any other choice. There weren't any other airports that he was familiar with closed nearby, and since Captain Lancaster was still firmly pressed up against the outside of the cockpit, threatening to be sucked away and caused them to crash at any given moment, Alastair began to anxiously descend towards Southampton Airport.

He was terrified that either the plane's runway wouldn't be long enough or the plane would be too heavy to land from not having used enough fuel or the plane's tires would burst upon landing. There were just way too many things that could go wrong and too many potential scenarios that ended up with them crashing the plane and killing everyone on board.

Another factor that played a role in his extreme stress and anxiety was that up until this point, Alastair had always been used to landing with the help and company of another pilot. That was the way he had been trained. So to land a plane all by himself would be an entirely different feat. To pull off, give it everything.

It was going to be the most dangerous and difficult landing of Alistair's entire career. But amazingly, against all odds, he managed to actually do it. British Airways Flight 5 to 19 made a perfect emergency landing at Southampton Airport. Immediately, the aircraft was surrounded by emergency vehicles. Firefighters, paramedics and airport staff swarmed the area, hoping its passengers and crew members off the plane.

Miraculously, Captain Lancasters somehow survived his horrifying ordeal despite being trapped outside of the plane at 17,000 feet in the air for almost 10 minutes in an environment of extreme cold and very little oxygen. Tim Lancaster only suffered from a couple of minor bone fractures, a broken left thumb frostbite. And so because of the extremely heroic actions of his copilot, Alistair.

Taking control of the plummeting, chaotic plane and managing to land in just 22 minutes completely by himself, not a single person lost their lives on his flight. In addition, without the help and level headedness of the plane's flight attendants as well, this wouldn't have been possible either. In the weeks following the incident, an investigation revealed that the reason behind the cockpits windscreen panels suddenly becoming loose during the flight was that an engineer had rushed to repair process and then mistakenly using the wrong bolts to install the windscreen.

This investigation also found that in general, many of British Airways safety policies were just simply never followed by any of the maintenance engineers, since they were always overloaded with work and didn't have the time to do things as meticulously and as carefully as regulations demanded. Following these revelations, several changes were recommended to correct this problem and also to strengthen British Airways safety policies to ensure that an incident like this would never happen again.

In the aftermath of the accident, the crew of the plane were declared heroes. The copilot, Alistair Acheson, as well as two of the flight attendants, Nigel Ogden and Susan Gibbons, were each awarded the Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service in the air. Alyssa was also awarded the coveted Polaris Award for Outstanding Airmanship. Unfortunately, however, pretty much every crewmember onboard British Airways Flight five, 30, 90 suffered from some degree of post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their experiences.

Captain Lancaster needed five months to return back to work, and Alastair left British Airways entirely shortly after the incident to go fly with a different airline. Among the flight attendants, Nigel Ogden had it the worst. Although he tried returning back to work, he was forced to change career paths around a decade later due to PTSD and his declining health as a result of it.

As of the last time he was interviewed in 2005, 15 years after the incident, he was still thinking about his experience aboard that plane every single day because of the incredible heroism and efforts of the crew. However, 81 people were allowed to go home to their families that day and to continue on living their lives. These crew members should be remembered for their bravery and for making what might have been a devastating tragedy into a story of survival.

Take care, guys, and I'll see you all next week.