Impossible if the plane is pressurized, due to the huge force the air exerts on the door. And, IIRC, the doors can be “locked” by the pilot on some planes, but I am uncertain about this.
Opening an exit door in flight is impossible. Go ahead, try it the next time you are flying.
Doors on airplanes are plug-type doors, meaning that the door plugs up against the fuselage. These doors must be opened by first bringing them inward, then rotating them and swinging them outward. In flight the airplane is pressurized, which means that to bring the door inward you must overcome the differential pressure of the cabin. As I said earlier, most commercial airplanes are pressurized to around 8.0 psid (psi differential). Using round numbers of a door that is 3 feet wide and 6 feet tall, we have a surface area of 36" x 72" = 2592 in sq. At 8.0 psi, that is 20,736 pounds of force you must overcome to move that door inward during flight.
Let’s look at a “best-case” scenario: trying to pull open one of those smaller overwing extis while the plane is passing through 10,000 feet and the cabin pressure psid is only 3.0. An overwing exit is about 2 feet by 4 feet, or 24" x 48" = 1152 in sq. At 3.0 psid, that is 3,456 pound of force required to pull that small door inward.
So, the ONLY time something like could be successful is when the airplane is unpressurized.
I’ve never heard of this myself, ( except in the new era of security, the cockpit door 
). It could possibly even cause problems in an emergency landing, if the pilots were incapacitated.
However the flight crew will have as part of their cockpit display an indication of the state of each door, whether it is unlocked/locked.
V
If you’re talking about pressurized aiprlanes no, you can’t open a door in flight for reasons already stated.
But in an unpressurized airplane, yes, you can open a door while in flight, at least in the small airplanes I fly. In fact, sometimes they even pop open themselves. Which probably sounds really scary to the average person, but it’s not. The airstream passing over the door while in flight exerts significant pressure on the door. If they pop open they open maybe an inch at most and it’s no big deal (assuming there’s no panic) for the passenger to pull it closed and lock it. Even if you don’t, the airplane will fly acceptably even with the door cracked open until you can land again. You’re not going to get sucked out or anything.
(Usual disclaimer that this applies to the small airplanes I fly and it’s quite possible that there may be a small airplane out there that does not confrom to the above that I am not aware of because I don’t fly that particular one)
Even so, pushing the door further open requires considerable oomph. Yes, it’s doable - even a little female like me can do it - but you’ll put some effort into it. And as soon as you let go the door closes up again. This has a lot to do with why skydiver’s planes usually have the exit door removed. Much easier to manage that way.
And windows in non-pressurized airplanes are not hermetically sealed - most pilots have either experienced or heard of airplanes flown through rainstorms that leaked heavily. Even so, the odds of a losing a window is very, very small. The only occurance I’m aware of involved a birdstrike with a Canadian goose. Yes, that will take care of the window. In general, though, they don’t spontaneously pop out on their own.
Anyhow - in the-small-airplanes-I-fly there are door latches - from one to four, depending on airplane. These “lock” the door in the sense of holding it closed, but can be easily undone by a knowleadgable passenger.
Door opening is a concern when you’re talking about emergency landing/crashing. Most of the time in unpressurized airplanes the maker recommends popping the door open slightly before impact (this assumes you have some warning of impact, of course) so that if the fuselage is deformed by the hard landing it doesn’t jam the door shut so it’s impossible to open. (One of my complaints about Piper’s is the single door - small Cessnas usually have two doors, giving you more options in these situations. However, it doesn’t stop me flying Pipers, which goes to show this is not a huge concern of mine).
I should point out, however, that the door mechanisms on passenger jets are much, much different than those on small, single engine, piston planes such as I fly.
I would hazard that an emergency landing with incapacitated pilots would be a no-win situation any way you slice it.
There have been no changes to exit doors on passenger airliners recently. We have no control of exit doors from the cockpit- all we have are indications of which doors are open or closed. The only door that we have control over is the cockpit door. These HAVE been changed since 9/11, and are much more secure than before.
Oh, c’mon, I think he means if the pilots were incapacitated as an outcome of the landing.
I would think the most important consequence of windows is that they constitute areas of stress concentration by reducing the amount of structure and by having corners. Since the fuselage cycles from non-pressurized to pressurized there is a fatigue factor which, I think, is what brought down the DeHaviland Comets.
One of the really astonishing accidents was that Hawaiian Airlines 737 that lost a section of the fuselage. I still don’t see how that airplane stayed in one piece with the whole top half of the structure gone. The bottom half must be overstrength.
I remember sitting in the lounge of Lockheed Constellations which was way back in the rear end. During turns you could feel the fuselage twist and wobble around. This shows that maneuver forces are large because an airplane fuselage doesn’t wobble all that easily. And the Hawaiin 737 fuselage held together even though several maneuvers had to be made in order to land. And the pilot must have “greased it on” to prevent it from breaking up on landing.
Same difference, I’d think.
Has someone else been reading No Highway?
The MD-80’s, 737’s, 727’s, 767’s, and 757’s I fly on all the time (ever few weeks) have a perceptable twist and wobble while making abrupt manuevers. I’ve even had a 777 “move” alarmingly during a rough descent into Heathrow.
Sigh. As I mentioned before:
The only square windows on airliners today are up front, and the areas around them are VERY strong. Commercial airliners have a structure completely separate from the fuselage skin and windows that keeps the airplane together. These spars, stringers and other items are extremely strong and are designed to withstand forces much greater than those experienced in everyday flight. The Aloha flight was exceptional, but once the top came off and the thing kept flying it was almost guaranteed to land safely. If it was going to come apart, it would have done so almost immediately.
As for bends and twists in the fuselage and wings - it’s all planned for and designed into the airplane. When the airplane bends, it absorbs energy - energy that is now NOT transferred to you in your seat. Bending airplanes = smooth rides.
As an example for frequent fliers, compare the ride on an Airbus A-300 or A-310 (notorious for it’s stiff wing) and the ride on a Boeing 777. The 777’s wing is designed to flex - in fact, at max takeoff weight when a 777 lifts off you could string a wire between the two wingtips and have it pass completely above the fuselage. That is how much the wings flex, and in flight that designed flexing absorbs many of the bumps that would be transmitted to the cabin with a stiffer wing. The result is a smoother ride, and less stress absorbed by the fuselage.
Sigh. As I mentioned before:
The only square windows on airliners today are up front, and the areas around them are VERY strong. Commercial airliners have a structure completely separate from the fuselage skin and windows that keeps the airplane together. These spars, stringers and other items are extremely strong and are designed to withstand forces much greater than those experienced in everyday flight. The Aloha flight was exceptional, but once the top came off and the thing kept flying it was almost guaranteed to land safely. If it was going to come apart, it would have done so almost immediately.
As for bends and twists in the fuselage and wings - it’s all planned for and designed into the airplane. When the airplane bends, it absorbs energy - energy that is now NOT transferred to you in your seat. Bending airplanes = smooth rides.
As an example for frequent fliers, compare the ride on an Airbus A-300 or A-310 (notorious for it’s stiff wing) and the ride on a Boeing 777. The 777’s wing is designed to flex - in fact, at max takeoff weight when a 777 lifts off you could string a wire between the two wingtips and have it pass completely above the fuselage. That is how much the wings flex, and in flight that designed flexing absorbs many of the bumps that would be transmitted to the cabin with a stiffer wing. The result is a smoother ride, and less stress absorbed by the fuselage.
And yet smooth rides somehow do not prevent double-posts!
Sigh. I didn’t say that windows have square corners. But they are points of stress concentration and I really didn’t think I had to mention that the design is well established by now.
Sigh. Of course, but I really don’t think that the designers planned on the top half of the fuselage being torn away. Talk about square corners!
Now, let’s not get snarky.
The “Sigh” quote from me is transposed onto my additional comments, and is NOT in context at all. It was meant for (and should be attributed to) what I had said earlier in this thread - the “sigh” being shorthand for “I guess people don’t read the thread before they post, because this has already been mentioned.”
And as for this:
Now, let’s not get snarky.
The “Sigh” quote from me is transposed onto my additional comments, and is NOT in context at all. It was meant for (and should be attributed to) what I had said earlier in this thread - the “sigh” being shorthand for “I guess people don’t read the thread before they post, because this has already been mentioned.”
And as for this:
I’ve only seen one jumpship with the door actually removed, that was a Beech Twin Bonanza and we had a fabric door that snapped into place. At least in the Midwest we were still jumping into the chilly months and you NEED a door on the way up.
High-wing planes like Cessna 172, 182 and 206 generally have a door that is hinged at the top and opens outward. You had to hang onto the handle because as you pushed it open, the door wanted to rotate upwards and that’s where it would stay, pressed right against the bottom of the wing.
On planes like Twin Otters and King Airs you’ll usually see a slide-up door - think something like a tambour desk or rollup garage door, that rides on the inside of the fuselage.
Tailgates that I’ve seen were either automated (Casa) or manual (Skyvan).
The only rear-sliding doors (like on a minivan) I recall were on the Pilatus Porter, Cessna Caravan and a single Super Helio Stallion.
At any rate the reason for most of these doors opening the way they do is simple - you CAN’T have a door open inwards if you’ve got a plane crammed full of jumpers sitting on each others laps, no room for it. You have to have something that opens outward (which tends to involve lots of doors banging into the side of the plane at high speed, a bad thing) or slides up inside the plane and has as few projections as possible (to avoid snagging harness, handles, etc when somebody is on the way out the door, I’ve seen it happen and it’s not pretty).
I/m inclined to doubt this. I think commercial airliners, like most airplanes today are monocoque construction
Dammit! OK, since the hamsters think that preview = post tonight, I’m done.
I was just making the point that “having corners” is the same, engineering wise, as “being square”. Corners = fatigue stress. That is all.
The “Sigh” comment was on people not reading the prior posts in this thread. Having this taken out of context and then misquoted in a response just gets me riled up.
Bottom line - you should NOT worry about an airplane window failing and sucking you out. Period.
This IS GQ, after all.
Agreed. So let’s also not patronize.
And I hit the “submit” button instead of “preview” so to continue. Many of the stringers and frames that you claim hold the airplane together on the 737 were ruptured and blown away. And the skin does carry a part of the load. The design computations contemplate an intact, semi-monocoque structure, not one that has been violently partialy disassembled. You can pooh-pooh all you want but I think it was an exceptionally skilful bit of flying and colossal good luck that kept the thing from coming apart because of maneuvering stress.
OK, David I am NOT going to play the selective quote game with you. You have now attributed my “Sigh” and “As I mentioned before” to anything and everything.
Also, if you will follow your own link you will find that a part of moncoque airplane structures is “stringers”, which, amazingly, I mentioned in the VERY NEXT sentence, but you refused to quote.
From ME:
You failed to include my last sentence but then included a link that mentions spars and stringers.
Now I am really done. The GQ has been asked and answered. And with the hamsters operating the way they are tonight, I’m sure that I will have either three responses or one spaced every hour for the next three hours, so this “debate” will make no sense to anyone reading it.
Fly safe.
If I understand you right, the doors were modified on those planes. All the 172, 182, etc. planes I’ve seen and flown had doors hinged at the forward side of the door, so when the door was opened it would open towards the strut. For skydiving, though, a door hinged to open upward would make more sense.