Captain through the windscreen
 

I remember seeing the Air Crash Investigation programme a while ago about the BAC 1-11 windscreen blow-out in 1990, when the Captain was half sucked out, and the fantastic actions of the crew who managed to hang onto his legs until the plane landed, and saved his life.

I came across this report again recently on the web and was surprised to find out it happened over Didcot, where I now live.

I just wondered, does anybody know if the windscreen was ever recovered, whereabouts it fell to earth, and did it cause any damage on falling to the ground? I suspect it would have been a pretty hefty bit of metal and glass, and falling from 17,000 feet plus would have made quite a dent?

According to the AAIB report, http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources...2%20G-BJRT.pdf the windscreen was found near Cholsey in Oxfordshire

Many thanx WUB very interesting, and glad it was a successful outcome.

This may be of interest
 

http://aci.110mb.com/

The downloadable episode is there, very interesting site
Coopz

British Airways Flight 5390 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It was featured on an episode of the TV Show Mayday.

The documentary was shown on UK's Channel 5 0n 13 th January 2011.

If you live in the UK it can be seen on the 'net' at;

Ripped From The Cockpit: BA Flight of Terror | Ripped From The Cockpit: BA Flight of Terror | Five

If you are in other places in the world ( probably sunnier and warmer ) you may well be able to view it if you know someone with good internet knowladge.

This was a fairly good documetary, sticking mainly to the facts and based on the accident report.

coldair

I watched it, had seen it before or a similar one. What was interesting was that they kept talking about Captain Lancaster's 'body' and how he could not have survived, to the extent that even though I was sure he had survived, I began to doubt myself. In fact, thankfully he did survive what must have been a horrific experience, and now flies for easyJet.

A good documentary and worth watching if anyone can catch it again.

I forgot to mention.

The cockpit door was not locked, this enabled the flight attendants to assist in freeing the captains legs from the yoke. If the door were locked all we would have had to go on would be the CVR.

... and all due to a miniscule discrepancy in renewing the
windshield screws - Not dissimilar to the Comet problem ie windows forced out when cabin air pressurisation applied.

...

The episode will be screened tonight on Channel 5 at 11.50.

I have just watched the video at

Ripped From The Cockpit: BA Flight of Terror | Ripped From The Cockpit: BA Flight of Terror | Five

Whew!

I believe the Comet losses were caused by square ADF window cut-outs that allowed crack propagation (and subsequent fuselage rupture) from the corners.
A hard learning curve in those days...

Pasair, a totally different scenario. As Stevef said, the Comet losses were due to the design of the windows causing crack propagtion which extended and gave way - a design fault, not an engineering fault. This incident was down to an engineering mistake - the wrong bolts were fitted.

... Thanks DX for your input on the Comet disaster - even though most of us on this board were already fully aware of the Comet square windows design fault.


However my last sentence of my original post was simply commenting on the similarity of the two disasters - ie pressurisation and forcing out of windows or windshields .

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