British Airways Flight 5390 was a charter flight operated by British Airways between Birmingham International Airport in Birmingham and Malaga.

Flight 5390 on June 10, 1990 almost ended in disaster, but became famous instead for the unusual circumstances in which the flight was able to perform an emergency landing .

The Incident

Commanded by Tim Lancaster and co-piloted by Alistair Atchingson , the aircraft, a BAC One-Eleven with the registration code G-BJRT, took off on June 10, 1990 with 81 passengers and 6 crew on board. While climbing past an altitude of 17,300 feet, with the commander flying the aircraft, the windshield on the commander's side experienced a catastrophic failure.

The extreme air pressure difference between the outside air (lower pressure) and inside air (higher pressure) blew the commander's windshield out. The commander was then blown headfirst out of the cockpit. Incredibly, the back of the commander's knees caught on the windshield frame as he was blown out of the cockpit, and his ankles jammed between the cockpit coaming and the control column. This combination left the commander's upper body outside the aircraft, with his back against the upper fuselage. Cabin crew were quick to react to the incident and manually restrained the captains legs preventing further egress.

The co-pilot regained control of the aircraft, and asked for immediate emergency landing at nearby Southampton airport. Under these extreme conditions, the co-pilot successfully landed the aircraft 20 minutes later.

Despite the violent ejection, and enduring 340 knot winds at sub-freezing temperatures for 20 minutes, the commander survived this incident. He was hospitalized for a few days and treated for frostbite, and a broken arm and wrists. He suffered no permanent injuries. No one else on board the aircraft was hurt.

The Investigation

The final report by British accident investigators found that 84 of the 90 retention bolts in the windshield were of a diameter smaller than specified. These smaller bolts led to the failure of the windshield.

The investigators blamed the British Airways' Birmingham airport shift maintenance manager for installing the smaller bolts when he replaced the windshield, and for failing to follow official British Airway's policies that could have prevented the incident. The investigators also found fault with British Airways' policies which should have required testing or verification by another person for windshield replacements. Finally, the investigators blamed the local Birmingham management for not directly monitoring the shift maintenance manager's working practices.

Several new aviation safety laws were passed after this incident, many of them which had to do with an airline's responsibility for knowing each individual that worked at any flight safety task, and for keeping track of the work records of those individuals.