# What happens if an airliner emergency door is opened while the plane is in mid-air?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-an-airliner-emergency-door-is-opened-while-the-plane-is-in-mid-air/632499>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 24, 2012, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-an-airliner-emergency-door-is-opened-while-the-plane-is-in-mid-air/632499 "2012-08-24T15:54:43Z")\
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**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-an-airliner-emergency-door-is-opened-while-the-plane-is-in-mid-air/632499/23 "2012-08-25T20:08:29Z")

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> [@Simple\_Linctus](#):
>
> There have been numerous cases of these things going wrong and most famously we’re talking about the DC10 here.

Boeing 747s had a few incidents with this type of thing too. See [Pan Am 125](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_125) (no deaths) and [United 811](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_811) (nine deaths.)

The examples of the United and Turkish Airlines flights would seem to indicate that survivability depends quite a bit on where the debris from the decompression goes. If it hits an engine or severs a line for a control surface, that’s problematic.

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