How sturdy are airplane windows? They get awfully cold up there… and I would think brittle… Would it be possible for, say, an idiot to break one with gruesome consequences? And if it were to break, would people really get sucked out the windows?
Hi, don’t worry, my dad used to be an aircraft engineer, the windows are perfectly safe, they are made of thick laminated glass and they have plasctic covers on ,they are made to withstand hail storms, so i would think they are pretty tough, and unless someone had a mjor accident that resulted in them firing a load of bullets at the windows, then i don’t think that anyone could accidently break the windows.
I don’t really know whether people would get sucked out of the windows like they do in films, i suppose its possible, but there would certainly be a lot of wind and noise, hope i have been of help to you
**Very.
**Yes, someone could break one if he/she were determined enough.
Not likely. There isn’t THAT much of a pressure differential between the cabin and the outside air. Cabins are typically pressurized to 11psi, and the outside pressure would be about 4.4psi at 30,000 feet on a standard day.
Passenger aircraft (Boeing 737,757, etc.) cabin windows are not glass. They are two panes of plastic with a small space between them(vented to cabin air). They have a rubber seal which holds the panes together as a unit. This is placed in the aperture in the aircraft skin and is held in by various means depending on the type of aircraft (clips for e.g.) Obviously aircraft pressure will also make sure the windows stay in place. Covering all that is the cabin trim which has a thin transparent panel so you can see out! and also prevents passengers from damaging the panes.
Cockpit windows are often plastic too except for the two main windscreens in front of the pilots. These are laminated glass- as already stated. They have heating elements embedded in them to prevent thermal shock (among other things) The pair of windows immediately behind the main windscreens are also usually glass ( they often will open on the ground and are sometimes called Direct Vision windows)
The heating elements in cockpit windows prevent them becoming brittle in the cold of higher altitudes.
In answer to your question on whether you can be sucked out, yes you can, if the cabin altitude is higher than the outside altitude. Which it usually is for passenger comfort… I know of a case on a BAC111 where the main cockpit window was fitted with the wrong retaining bolts and cabin pressure blew out the windscreen, taking the pilot partly with it. He was held in by an alert member of the cabin staff, holding on to his legs.
This was an exceptional case however and in general you should feel pretty secure.
V
But the passenger windows are far too small to be blown out of, and the pressure too low to “extrude” a person out of them as is seen in crappy movies.
I don’t think an average human could even get their head out one of those windows.
I bet I could.
But with air rushing by that orifice at several hindred knots, wouldn’t there be an appreciable venturi effect?
Well, lets think about this. A normal aircraft cabin is pressurized to a maximum of positive 8.0 PSID, or pounds per square inch differential from outside air. Most aircraft are limited to something around this number, so as you climb and the PSID reaches 8.0 the cabin altitude will climb as the aircraft climbs. This will result in a cabin altitude of around 7,000 feet at an altitude of 35,000 feet.
If you somehow manage to break a cabin window, you will suffer a rapid depressurization. All of the air inside the cabin at the higher pressure will escape through the available opening. This will create a violent environment. Moisture will condense, dust and dirt from the floor will be sucked up, and everything will rush toward the opening. This violence will only last for a few seconds, though - long enough for the pressure to equalize. You will exhale the biggest breath of your life, see some fog, and then reach for the oxygen mask.
As for someone sitting next to the open window, it would be VERY violent - huge volumes of air exiting, dust and debris flying by, and a very large negative pressure on the outside. As other people have stated, a normal sized-person could not fit through one of these windows. If the window itself is the only thing missing, you WOULD be sucked toward it briefly - maybe three seconds total until the pressure equalizes. If you can avoid having your head sucked outside during this time, you should be fine (other than flailing injuries or inhaling dust).
The problem arises because it is almost never JUST a window that goes. The first jetliners, the British Comets, had windows fail three times and each time the entire aircraft was lost. The window was the stress point that failed, but after that failure the fuselage came apart.
Designers learned from this mistake - that’s why aircraft windows today are round (the Comet had square windows, creating metal fatigue points at the corners). They also learned from previous mistakes, like the Aloha Airlines 737 that lost it’s top and the United Airlines 747 that lost a cargo door.
As for the paranoia value of this - almost nil. In order to break a passenger aircraft window you would have to hack away with some pretty serious hardware. If you manage to get it through security, expect the flight crew or other passengers to restrain you once you actually begin hacking at a window. The chance of actually doing this are almost zero.
Sleep tight, and fly safe!
Here’s a report for those of you who doubt the impact of explosive de-compression. This is the incident concerning the BAC 111.
Fortunately incidents of this nature are very rare.
V
Unless the airplane is in a hole in the ground or below the surface of some body of water, the above is always true, even when the airplane is on the ground with its doors open.
As a sometimes-passenger on commercial airliners, I can confirm that I was more comfortable with my seat being at a higher altitude than the ground at every point in the flight.
Perhaps you meant to type “pressure”, or “atmospheres” instead of “altitude”, Vetch?
I mean, I mean…
the part about the cabin altitude being higher than the outside altitude for passenger comfort … is true!
(wishing the “edit” button worked)
Current aircraft windows are made out of Lexan. The windows themselves are about 3/4 of an inch bigger than the opening they fit it. And yes, most normal humans can fit their head through the opening. I helped change a couple at work the other day and popped my head through the opening. In my 20+ years at Boeing, I have probably changed a few hundred windows.
This is quite reassuring, but I still think I will sleep without resting my head on the window when I fly in the future.
Go ahead, but it really doesn’t make any difference whether or not your head is on the window if it goes, which I hasten to add, is the among least likely things that could cause you a problem on an airplane.
As to the difference in pressure being minor as this quote implies, "There isn’t THAT much of a pressure differential between the cabin and the outside air. Cabins are typically pressurized to 11psi, and the outside pressure would be about 4.4psi at 30,000 feet on a standard day. " consider this"
A 6.6 psi difference like the one cited above results in 950 pounds of force on each square foot of area.
There was an incident with a small fault in a window about 15 years ago and sucked a guy out. The full story was quite horrifying. The window size is small but a human under strong pressure is reasonably deformable. (To put it coldly.) Very small defects in windows are usually the cause in window failures, but sometimes there’s a defect in the seal around it.
Here’s a pdf about cabin decompression.
Another reason to wear your seatbelt at all times when in flight!
Umm…no. I’m asking for a cite on this one. The relatively low pressure differential of the altitude versus that in the plane is not going to break someone’s collarbone and pelvis and extrude them through the window like toothpaste, despite what Hollywood says. I can routinely subject my hand to near 0 psia via a large cylinder cut from a 1-inch diamter syringe, and not even have it hurt me, let alone tear the skin or deform my hand. A window would have to be very large, and the person really blocking it with an air-tight seal, to be popped out through one.
I’m a little skeptical.
First of all, the average adult might be able to fit a body part through a window, but I don’t they’re going to be extruded if just the window fails. Note this is different than a discussion of having part of the fuselage peel off, as over Hawaii. I could see a situation where a window blows out and a person lands over the hole, blocking it with their body - the pressure differential would then hold them firmly in place, and I imagine there would be pain involved, but I would expect it to be survivable unless they land in such a way as to restrict their ability to breathe (in which case it’s lack of breathing that kills them) or if there are sharp, jagged edges to the hole which can cut into a body, or even through a body (in which case it’s being sliced and diced that kills the person). A shuttle astronaut once put a hole in his glove during a outside work shift and he was not “extruded” through the hole (basically, the pressure difference caused part of the skin of his hand to press up against the hole, resealing it, and he bleed a little through his skin, but nothing remotely life-threatening) and Colonel Kittenger on his record skydive from 100,000+ feet - MUCH higher than commercial aircraft fly - likewise had his right hand glove depressurize. He was not, however, subsequently “extruded” through his own shirtsleeve. His hand did swell up alarmingly, but no permanent damage done.
In other words, you CAN survive these sorts of accidents without major injury.
Also, while the Payne Stewart decompressing LearJet is a fascinating mystery, there is no proof, or even indication, that this was caused by a failure of either a window or a window seal. The leading theory is a failure of the system that pressurizes and maintains pressure in the airplane. Introducing that PDF to this thread is like saying the failture of a central air conditioning unit located in the untility room of a home was caused by a crack in an upstairs bedroom window. Interesting, but not entirely relevant. Particularly when there is no evidence that the crack in the upstairs bedroom window ever existed.
I don’t mean to hijack (definetely no pun intended) this thread but I’ve always wondered how hard it would be for some idiot to open an exit door during flight. Any ideas?