A Chinese passenger jet was forced into an emergency landing after its windscreen blew out at 32,000ft (9,753m), sucking the co-pilot halfway out of the plane.

Captain Liu Chuanjian said the Airbus A319 had been cruising mid-air when a deafening sound flooded the cockpit.

“There was no warning,” he told the Chengdu Economic Daily.

“The windshield just cracked and made a loud bang. The next thing I knew, my co-pilot had been sucked halfway out.”

Luckily, the co-pilot was wearing a seatbelt. He was dragged back into the chaos of the cockpit, where pressure and temperature had dropped and the equipment was failing.

“Everything in the cockpit was floating in the air,” the captain said. “I couldn’t hear the radio. The plane was shaking so hard I could not read the gauges.”