It’s every passenger’s worst nightmare – travelling in a plane that suffers a blowout midair.
That nightmare became a reality for passengers on a domestic Alaska Airlines flight last week when a door plug blew out shortly after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, causing a rapid loss of cabin pressure.
Luckily for the nearly 180 people on board that flight, pilots were able to land the plane safely and nobody was injured.
Some other planes and passengers over the years have not been as fortunate.
The pilot who spent 20 minutes flying 'outside' the cockpit
British Airways Flight BA5390 was in the middle of its journey between Birmingham to Malaga on June 10, 1990 when it lost part of its cockpit windscreen.
The plane’s pilot, Captain Tim Lancaster, was immediately sucked out of the cockpit.
His first piece of luck following that calamity was still having his legs jammed inside the cockpit. His second was the quick thinking by a flight attendant by the name of Nigel Ogden.
Looking past the internal cockpit door that had also been ripped off during the incident, Ogden saw Lancaster half out of the cockpit and rushed to grab his ankles.
Co-pilot Alastair Atchison took control of the plane while Ogden and another crew member tried to pull Lancaster back inside. They couldn’t and Lancaster spent 20 minutes being lashed by freezing winds and banging against the side of the plane.
The crew on board the flight were convinced Lancaster was dead.
Remarkably, he survived the ordeal — albeit with frostbite and some fractured bones.
The co-pilot and the cracked windshield
Nearly 30 years after Lancaster’s horror experience, another pilot suffered a similar incident during a Sichuan Airlines flight in May 2018.
The plane’s windshield cracked mid-flight, with first officer Xu Ruichen partially sucked out of the cockpit.
Pilot Liu Chuanjian managed to safely land the Airbus A319 manually amid the loud noise and freezing temperatures that come with being in a compromised cockpit at 32,000 feet.
Xu was left with scratches and a sprained wrist.
The horror on a flight from Honolulu
United Airlines Flight 811 had just taken off from Honolulu, bound for Auckland, on February 24, 1989, when a cargo door swung open and part of the plane’s fuselage peeled back.
The sudden decompression blew several rows of seats out of the plane, taking nine passengers with them.
Pilots managed to land the plane back in Honolulu but no remains of those nine passengers were ever found.
New Zealander Lee Campbell was among those who died that day.
The passengers that were exposed to extreme winds at 24,000 feet
In April 1988, Aloha Airlines Flight 243 lost part of its upper fuselage during a short flight between Hilo and Honolulu.
The 89 passengers and six crew on board were then subjected to the elements as pilots struggled to land a structurally compromised aircraft that was also without the use of its left engine.
Many of the passengers suffered injuries as they were hit with debris.
The plane eventually landed in Maui, but not before flight attendant Clarabelle Lansing lost her life after being ejected from the plane.
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