The 6 Most Badass Airline Pilots To Ever Stare Down Death
Admit it: At one time or another, you've thought, Man, being an airline pilot seems like a pretty easy job. And even they'll tell you that airliners pretty much fly themselves. For most of the trip, the pilot is there to make sure nothing goes wrong.
But sometimes, things do go wrong. Way wrong. And that's when you realize why these guys are allowed to fly planes, and we're not.
In 1990, British Airways Flight 5390 had just taken off from London on its way to Spain. However, right as the flight attendants were about to wheel out the food cart, the windshield of the plane suddenly exploded. If you're wondering what happens to the pilot in that situation, here's a reconstruction:
Via CaptainFox91
It is incredibly difficult to fly a plane from this position.
That's pilot Tim Lancaster being sucked out of the plane -- the only thing keeping him from flying off into the distance and plummeting to his death was a flight attendant, who ran in and grabbed Lancaster by the belt.
This, by the way, is precisely the reason why planes have co-pilots. And here's where one Mr. Alastair Atchison stepped up to the goddamned plate.
It wasn't going to be easy. Aside from the flight attendant next to him clutching the pilot's legs with all of his strength, the sudden decompression also pulled the cockpit door into the cockpit, which blocked access to the throttle. When Atchison tried to get on the radio to declare an emergency, he couldn't hear the response due to all the chaos erupting around him.
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"Will you lot stop bloody screaming! It's highly unprofessional."
It took several minutes to get emergency landing permission from an airport in Southampton, all the while with the pilot still outside the windshield from the knees up, being crushed against the plane at 500 miles per hour, suffering from frostbite and about to lose consciousness due to the thin air.
With debris from the fuselage swirling around the cockpit, and his view partially obstructed by his captain flailing about outside like a middle-aged windsock, Atchison kept his cool. He guided the plane to the ground, and gently landed 35 minutes after the windshield failure started the madness.
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They then started the difficult process of peeling the pilot off the top of the plane.
Amazingly, the pilot not only survived, but had only a few bone fractures and some frostbite to show from his exterior plane ride. The only other person injured was the first flight attendant who hung onto him during the ordeal, also suffering from frostbite.
Via airflightsto
"You have to admit, Tim. It was kind of hilarious to see."
British Airways Flight 9 was flying from London to New Zealand in 1982, and was on one of the last legs of the trip, going from Malaysia to Perth, Australia. Ash from a nearby volcano soon started to fill the air. The airplane went through it with no problem ... at first.
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"Fuck you, Eyjafjallajokull" -- the 80s
An electrical anomaly known as St. Elmo's fire suddenly erupted on the windshield. The passenger cabin began to smell of sulfur. Then, one by one, the engines began failing, clogged with volcanic ash. After all four engines had ground to a halt, the flight engineer yelled, "I don't believe it, all four engines have failed!"
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"Well, thanks, Captain Obvious. Hey, how about you sort this out. We're going to the mini bar."
At this point, the falling aircraft had about 23 minutes of glide time until it hit the ocean. The crew frantically tried to restart the engines in mid-air. With a crash landing possibly only minutes away, the pilot, Captain Eric Moody, made a breathtaking announcement over the PA: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress."
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"Please keep all hysteria to yourself to avoid disturbing passengers who are sleeping. Thank you."
The plane continued to lose altitude and the oxygen masks dropped in the passenger compartment. The crew was about one minute away from having to make an emergency landing in an ocean with a 747 -- something no one had ever tried.
Then, in between bouts of frenzied cursing and pants-inflating bowel explosions, Moody and his crew tried one more time to restart the engines ... and it worked. The engines spun back to life, one by one. They climbed and leveled the plane at 12,000 feet, then starting racing towards the nearest airport in Jakarta.
On the way, the engines started clicking off again.
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Lady Luck always uses loaded dice.
And even worse, the windshield was so fogged up that they had to rely on the lights on the tarmac they could only see through a small, clear part of the windshield. And so they headed down, speeding toward the pavement, squinting through glass caked with goddamned volcano ash.
Finally, with the sound of 248 unclenching passenger buttholes, the wheels touched down. No lives were lost, but in the captain's own hilarious words, it was "a bit like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse."
In 1985, Chinese Airlines Flight 006 was flying from Taiwan to Los Angeles when an engine went out on the side of the plane. The same engine had failed twice on previous flights but restarted shortly after going out both times -- which, according to traditional aircraft maintenance guidelines, is totally just as good as actually working (you'll find out as this entry goes on that back then, Chinese airlines apparently just did not give a fuck).
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Third time's a charm!
After the flight engineer tried and failed to revive the engine, the autopilot kicked in and tilted the plane 23 degrees to compensate for engine loss. But it didn't stop at 23 degrees. Pilot Min-Yuan Ho, drawing from his years of experience, determined that commercial airliners don't normally do this and disengaged the autopilot. By the time he did, the plane had tipped up on its side, and was falling fast.
Via Wikipedia
Planes should not do this.
So now he was plummeting toward the ocean, blinded by clouds and working with an artificial horizon system that was saying everything was OK (even though it plainly was not). Things became even less OK when the plane started diving and turning at the same time, doing a barrel roll heading straight down, losing 10,000 feet of altitude in less than 20 seconds.
Via Wikipedia
It was trying to spell "AARGH."
The pilot managed to wrestle the aircraft under control with about 20 seconds to spare before it would have splashed down.
But they weren't out of the woods. The landing gear was now stuck down, and the drag that it was causing meant they wouldn't have enough fuel to get to Los Angeles. They diverted to San Francisco, limping along on one engine. But the flight crew didn't even announce their landing as any kind of emergency to the stunned air traffic controllers. We told you, the Chinese didn't give a single fuck.
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"San Francisco, could you move that tower slightly to the side? Frankly, it's just in the way."
It was only after learning of injuries on board that the tower declared the spiraling jumbo jet to be an emergency. Incredibly, it landed with just a broken tail wing and only two seriously injured passengers which, given the operation standards of the airline, was probably well within normal guidelines.
no 2 had a happier ending than it could have had.
Replysee the 1992 film. Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232 .
with Charlton Heston, James Coburn and Richard Thomas
The film? I remember the nonstop Breaking News coverage the moment it happened. The son of a b***h looked like it did several cartwheels through gigantic fireballs before mercifully coming to a stop. Very little in the way of non-grainy footage, but just enough to tell yourself absolutely no way a single person survived that bastard. Then they announced how many did survive. A true WTF, but unfortunately the only entry here that suffered a casualty rate, and a pretty high one at that, minus the *all things considered* portion.
#6 and #5 were shown on an NG Seconds From Disaster.
ReplyI understand where some commenters are coming from, questioning the placement of Sully at #1. But he was in a crowded city, stuck with literally nowhere else to go, no power, and he managed to make it work. More than that, he was noble enough to stay in the craft until everyone else was off of it. I love these kinds of columns. More, please!
ReplyI doubt Captain Sully has had to pay for a drink, dinner, or literally anything since landing that plane.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesAnd with reason.
If people give free stuff to artists and athletes, why not a real hero?
I'd bet he had to pay to have his pants dry-cleaned, though.
The man got back inside the cockpit within weeks. His new side job thanks to his celebrity status is pimping Your Local Library and how everyone should donate money to buy books for everyone to read. It does not get much more awesome than Captain Sully.
Chinese Airlines 006 fell 9 KILO meters in 2.5 minutes. So basically he straightened the plane with his massive balls rather than the engines. And then go about as if its business as usual. I think the pilot used to eat balls for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
ReplyThe AA flight 96 incident was actually caused by a faulty design in the cargo door. The bolt locking the door in place would sometimes not engage. The company that produced the aircraft knew about the problem and didn't fix it until another similar accident happened, claiming all lives onboard.
ReplyAnd the China Airline incident was not caused by the autopilot. It was caused by human error. The captain had been taking long shifts across time zones. He "accidentally" turned all his engines to idle, then banked the plane way out of operational limits. Though he was experienced enough to save the flight in question at the end.
The photo captions were the best part. I laughed out loud at every single one. (great article, too, though!)
ReplyChina Airlines still does not give a f**k.
ReplyPretty sure that China ANYTHING does not give a f**k
Was Fabio on US Airways Flight 1549?
ReplyHaynes benefited by having a DC-10 flight instructor on-board, Dennis E. Fitch, who offered assistance and actually worked the throttles during the emergency. Even so, Haynes just doesn't deserve a spot even according to your own sources. He was not the first pilot to suffer loss of all controls and allow people to survive the ensuing "landing".
ReplyThe link you provided shows that in 1985 (4 years before United 232), 4 people survived a similar accident on j*pan Air 123. And more recently, an A300 transport craft was hit by a SAM and that crew managed to circle around and land the aircraft safely with nothing but differential thrust.
And I know he's a local hero, but no way Sully is number one. He pulled off a regular water landing in front of a lot of witnesses, but so far, every commercial flight that has experienced a controlled ditch on water has resulted in at least survivors. (The average rate of survival is 69 percent, though a good many deaths included in that statistic were people who actually succ*mbed of hypothermia or other secondary causes.) And it was just luck that he didn't hit the bridge, which he wasn't even aware was on his flightpath (and was pretty powerless to avoid).
Put simply, the most bad-ass pilot is Captain Robert Schornstheimer. In my book, he's ahead in the race by at least 26 miles (the distance he flew his airplane as a convertible, with damaged electrical wiring, after the roof peeled off like a banana at 23,000 feet). 95 people on board, one death. 65 injured. The airport had to use tourist vans as ambulances, with mechanics working triage.
What about that one where they lost power and decided to land on an old, disused airfield. They forgot that "disused" meant "not used for flying" and that actually it was a drag racing track, and race day! The plane landed right on top of the armco divider in the middle, which luckily helped it to stop.
ReplyThere were also 2 children in front of the plane, and it stopped right in front of them.
You forgot the "Gimli Glider." :(
ReplyDefinitely the Gimli Glider. To even think about Side Slipping
a 767 is pure lunacy. But then again what other choice did he
have. Bob Pearson was the pilot who landed the Gimli Glider.
The story about the pilot hanging out of the window reminds me of the Navy pilot whose seat partially ejected in-flight, leaving him half hanging out of the aircraft. Fortunately it was a 2 seater (an A6 from memory) and the other pilot was able to make an emergency landing...on a CARRIER! Bare in mind, the semi-ejected crewman was unconscious and his neck was about a foot away from the shattered glass remains of the canopy, so it was only by a combination of extreme skill and even more luck that the guy survived (remember they are landing on a heaving flight deck, being stopped by an arrester cable). There was video of the landing so you can probably find it on youtube.
ReplyIt wasn't the pilot who was partially ejected, it was the B/N (Bombardier/Navigator). The B/N has no flight controls. He just aims the bombs ands tells the pilot where to go. Basically, the A-6 version of Goose from Top Gun. If it had been the pilot's seat that malfunctioned, the B/N would have had no choice but to eject and leave the pilot to die.
CRACKED writers finally have the opportunity to use the word "snarge" legitimately in an article and they boot it? Oh, the shame...
ReplyWasn't there a Hawaiian Airlines flight where the top of the entire fuselage was ripped off? And the only reason anyone survived was because they had their seatbelts on, so they didn't get sucked out.
ReplyBuckle up.
Badass, but from the sound of it it their survival was more on following the flight attendants'' instructions than the pilot's skills.
In 2009, US Airways Flight 1549, just after takeoff from New York, hit a flock of Canada geese.
ReplyFTFY
I've never heard anything like that before. Did it turn out ok?
I can't believe that flight attendant was able to hold on to the pilot for thirty minutes, not to mention having the mind to grab in the first place while the windshield is exploding. She should be number one on any list of "Most badass flight attendants," which is probably a pretty short list.
Reply"You have to admit, Tim. It was kind of hilarious to see."
The flight attendant in question was a man. And the pilot was pinned to the outside of the plain by pressure for a moment, during which time the flight attendant rushed in and grabbed him.
Of course, the really crazy part is that the pilot resumed flying once he recovered.
After something like that I would probably spend the rest of my life underground :D
Sully is an absolute hero. Not just an American hero, but one for the whole world. We get so very few of those these days so it's nice that this story ended so well.
ReplyOn Chinese Airlines Flight 006, you forgot to mention the aircraft reached and passed Mach 1. Also known as "faster than the speed of sound".
ReplyGreat article. These guys are all badasses because they pulled off stuff that no normal human can do, and were calm about it (except for the Chinese guy. That's how all their landings are).
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesWhich brings up the argument for the Gimli glider. At least in the dramatization, the pilot simply says "well... I guess I'll try to slip it" and the co-pilot gives him a "are you f**king kidding me?" look, followed by an "alright, go for it" look. Now THAT'S badass.
I've said it before and i'll say it again: What else was he going to do besides "slip it"? A lot of comments suggesting these pilots were super-bad-asses when all they did was what was necessary to survive. If there was any easier way to get out of these situations, they would have taken it.
Of course they would have taken any easier alternative!!
Its doing hwat is necessary to survive whilst maintaining your composure for long enough to do a good job which makes it badass. If they fell apart in tears and fluffed the landing, crashing the airliner into a hospital, that wouldn't be very badass would it.
p1t10 speaks the truth.