I sat in the emergency exit row today on the way to Anaheim. Hi SoCal Dopers, beautiful day! Does it set off an alarm and then the flight attendants will come and whack me with a pillow, wrestle me to the ground, and tie me up with a length of seatbelt. Or, will the cabin depressurize and we will all be sucked out like a spider in a Hoover. Anything else I didn’t think of? Has it ever happened?
You have to get past mother f**kin Guido first
Go here to find out http://www.Airtoons.com
The overwing exit doors are “plug” doors. That is, the door is bigger than the opening. It opens inward and cabin pressurization will hold it in place. At cruise altitude, the cabin’s pressurization will put over 4000 pounds of load on the door! (Door is rougly 22 x 32 inches, pressure difference between inside and outside cabin is about 6 psi, IIRC.) Good luck getting that open, Ahhh-nold.
The door switch has a sensor. If you try to open it, the pilots will know.
The doors are designed so that they open inward. If you can manage to overcome about five pounds per square inch of pressure acting on the door (Go For It, Ahnold!), then, yes, everything not tied down would be sucked out.
My husband’s been in the industry twenty-two years. He disagrees with Kamandi and says the door can be opened and the he’s personally aware of two times. (He was the man on the ground that spoke with the pilots and notified police for the arrest.) He explains that “you” might be lucky and your seat belt would hold you in or you might not. The seat belts would likely hold the other passengers in place. Obviously the air bag “butter cups” would drop down. It would take the pilots somewhere between 1 and 3 minutes to get below 10,000 feet.
And when the plane lands you will be arrested. It’s a federal crime.
The arrest would occur even if you opened the door while the plane was on the taxi way. A woman once opened the door to “delay a flight” because her husband did not arrive and she was on the plane with her kids. She was arrested and removed from the plane. He husband arrived in time to take custody of the kids before she was taken to the pokey.
The door must have been opened at lower altitudes, because at cruising altitude it is physically impossible.
Could be. I don’t know the altitudes other than the one cited where they were still on the ramp.
It also depends on the aircraft.
I can tell you that this is impossible on Boeing aircraft (I’m one of those engineer geek things). Pressurization keeps it closed. AFAIK, any commercial pressurized-cabin plane built after the '70’s will be the same.
Now, your husband may be thinking of a couple of rare instances where an airplane’s cabin was underpressurized with respect to outside pressure, which can happen during a very rapid descent or if the flight crew has set the cabin pressure for the incorrect airfield altitude. It is possible in these cases to open the pressure doors. There is one case I read about (too lazy to link-hunt) where a flight attendant fell out of the plane while it was parked on the runway due to the door forcefully opening inward which unbalanced him and caused him to fall out. It was at a low elevation airport and the cabin hadn’t had time to equalize pressure.
Try it on my plane you won’t get sucked out 'cause it’s not pressurized - but I just might beat the crap out of you after we land.
Actually had a passenger almost do just that two weeks ago - told her NOT to touch ANYTHING. She is not getting anymore rides from me for a long, long time.
I flew a Boeing 777 from Dallas to Japan recently, and I had the chance to chat with one of the pilots for quite a while. It was a brand-new airplane, with a “new car” smell, so we talked a lot about the 777 - maximum takeoff weights, amount of fuel it holds, etc.
Then the subject of the exit doors came up. He told me that the plane has deadbolt-type extensions that secure the door until they are below some specified altitude. This might just be the 777, because I had the impression that the force on the door would keep someone from opening it anyway.
that airtoons site has a couple nasty pictures that induce endless window-pop-up, so beware…
that airtoons site has a couple nasty pictures that induce endless window-pop-up, so beware…
there, that’s better.
On the latest 737s, the so-called Next Generation airplanes (737-6/7/8/900), the overwing emergency exits open outwards. There was a discussion with the FAA about it being too hard to open the inward-opening types with panicky passengers pressing themselves against the inside, so Boeing designed outward-opening escape doors.
I just checked the manual, and the initial movement is a bit inwards (and down), so I’m guessing that cabin pressurization would also prevent you from opening them in flight. Whew.