Tim Lancaster was 42 years old and was flying calmly toward Málaga when his cockpit windshield simply disappeared.
The depressurization sucked him outside in a fraction of a second. Only his legs remained inside the plane while the rest of his body hung at 5,000 meters, with freezing winds of 17 degrees below zero battering him relentlessly. Flight attendant Nigel Ogden did not hesitate: he threw himself over the controls and held him by the waist with all his strength, while co-pilot Alastair Atchison took command and called for help over the radio.
That is how they spent more than twenty minutes, the longest of their lives. When the plane finally landed, Lancaster was still alive, with fractures and bruises, but alive. The investigation later revealed something that sends chills down your spine: the windshield had been fitted with the wrong bolts because the maintenance chief did not have time to check the manual.
