The 3 Most Badass Airline Pilots To Ever Stare Down Death

#3.

British Airways Flight 9

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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"I Hate 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!

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.

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."

#2.

American Airlines Flight 96

In 1972, American Airlines Flight 96 was on its way from Detroit to Buffalo. Just after taking off, there was the sound of a massive crash. Pilot Bryce McCormick, known for having the most piloty name in history, thought he'd just been in a mid-air collision.

One of the engines went down. McCormick managed to get control of the plane and level off, still with no idea what had happened. He decided to turn around and go back to Detroit -- which, to be honest, is probably the only good reason to ever go back to Detroit.

Then, in the passenger area of the plane, a fog suddenly formed. Just as the crew was realizing this meant sudden decompression, the floor of the cabin started to collapse into the cargo hold. What the?

It turned out someone had forgotten to seal the cargo door, and the force of the takeoff had ripped it straight off and tossed it into the tail of the plane, disrupting the engine and the flaps in the back. And because the aircraft wasn't sealed, the inside began breaking up due to the sudden decrease in pressure. Passengers were told to brace themselves for an emergency landing, and to put their yellow oxygen masks on. Oh, wait, the oxygen bags didn't drop because they're only deployed when the plane is above 14,000 feet, and they were a few thousand feet under that window.

With the plane breaking up from the inside out, McCormick attempted a landing. They were coming in too hard and too fast, the sluggish controls putting the plane on a collision course with the hard surface of the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. McCormick fought to level out the plane, and got the wheels to the pavement, only to see the plane go skidding wildly off the runway.

He wrestled the big bastard back under control, the plane finally coming to a rest with two of the three landing gear sitting in the grass off the side of the pavement. The result: a few minor injuries. Amazing, considering an identical cargo door accident outside Paris resulted in the deaths of everybody on board. 

#1.

Miracle on the Hudson

In 2009, US Airways Flight 1549, just after takeoff from New York, hit a flock of Canadian geese. The birds obscured the windshield, which would be bad on its own. But they also clogged up both engines, and the plane lost all power.

What makes this case different from any on the list is that there would be no limping back to the airport for a hard landing on the runway. They weren't going to have the power to get back to an airport. Captain "Sully" Sullenburger radioed traffic control and told them as much.

He was going to have to set the plane down, which meant finding something other than a runway. In this case, all they had was the Hudson River.

If landing an airliner on a river already sounds like trying to float a boat through an iceberg, well, the situation was actually worse than that. Right ahead of the plane was a little obstacle called the George Washington Bridge. It happens to span the Hudson River right across the spot where Sullenburger's plane was going to make its descent. No one was more surprised than Sullenburger, by the way, who in all the excitement had forgotten the bridge was there (which is understandable because his windshield was covered in dead goose).

At this point, his instruments started screeching warnings about how he was about to crash into something huge and bridge-shaped.

Amazingly, the plane cleared the bridge by less than 900 feet, which had to be a nice wake-up call to the drivers on the bridge who looked up to see this hulking plane suddenly blotting out the sun.

Sullenburger guided the plane down. Finally it slammed into the river at about 150 miles per hour, crashing into the waves with an impact that inside the plane must have sounded like the goddamned world was ending. But the plane held together, and everyone survived.

Rescue boats rushed to the scene and pulled everyone out of the freezing water. Sullenburger was the last one off.