Playboy centrefold freaks out at 10,000 feet A Playboy centrefold took fellow plane passengers' breath away last week when she apparently tried to open the door on a plane flight from Florida to New York. Tiffany Livingston, 21 and 5' 6", reportedly bolted from her seat and grabbed the cabin door in an apparent attempt to open the cabin door on the Jet Blue flight. The …
She should be thankful she wasn't arrested.
Can't be bothered to look for it, but only a year or so ago an Australian woman did the same (apparently needing a cigarette) and was charged for it!
Considering the design of airplane cabin doors makes it impossible to open at altitude, you have to wonder at the logic...
Paris. Centrefold. 'nuff said.
Does anyone know, can you actually open a door on a plane, mid flight?
Is there an interlock to prevent such things? If there is, how would the interlock be deactivated in the case of an accident?
I've often wondered.
And if it is possible to open the door at 30,000 feet, are there any recorded incidents of someone having done so? What was the outcome?
It's not possible at altitude. Cabin doors are designed so you need to pull them inwards first, then slide sideways / out. It's not like a car door.
At high altitudes, the pressure outside the aircraft is much, much lower than inside the craft (where it's approximately "normal" pressure). Trying to pull the door in against that pressure is like trying to pull up a toilet plunger that's been firmly stuck to a surface.
Except orders of magnitudes harder - a single human (or even a small group) wouldn't be able to open the door - the handle would snap off first.
That said, I of course would not want to "test" this maths, even if it is theoretically impossible.
Helicoptor because... no planes.
I understand aeroplanes' cabins are pressured to something like 8000ft above sea level to reduce the effects of work hardening on the fuselage flexing due to an otherwise higher pressure differential. This is also a lower pressure limit to prevent ill effects on human occupants. So in fact up to 8000 ft you could open the door with limited ability higher depending on how strong you were or how many people attempted it.
The 8000ft pressurization is the minimum pressurization. They are allowed to pressurise lower and on short hops might pressurize far higher.
The pressurisation is not applied instantaneously but gradually so that your ears, lungs etc don't experience too much pain. There will always be some pressure differential, except maybe within the first few hundred ft or so.
How hard is it to rip the door open? Well it depends on the pressure difference. Even a 1000ft differential creates half a psi or so. At 35k ft, with 8k ft pressurisation, there is approx 7psi pressure differential. Since a door is approx 2000 square inches you'd need to pull with approx 7 tons. The handle etc will rip off way before you could force it.
Ummm I shall work in PSI - cause it's easier.... sort of.
Lets just say that a door is about 36" wide by 80" high - or about 2600 square inches... if the pressure differential is about say 1 PSI - that means you have 2600 pounds or around 1200Kg to pull back on.....
Now that is going to be ONE hard door to open....
And without looking it all up - I think there is more than 1 PSI of difference between 8000 foots and 33000 foots of altitude.
"And if it is possible to open the door at 30,000 feet, are there any recorded incidents of someone having done so? What was the outcome?"
Unless someone managed to set down on top of Everest, a 30k ft lockout would not be problem once it made sense to exit the plane. It is an interesting question though, if only on the grounds that if the lockout exists, it could fail to release when it should.
Airline doors. Marvellous engineering. Effectively, the higher the altitude, the more difficult is is to open the door. In fact at 33,000 feet it is impossible as the pressure inside the cabin is much greater than that outside. The door is held in place both by mechanical interlocks AND suction. This is of course a design feature.
Even if the mechanical interlocks failed, the door would still not fly open and explosively suck everyone out.
Sorted.
Although on some small planes, of a certain antiquity, this isn't the case, natch.
DC-10s and 747s both used outward opening cargo doors which were linked to a number of disasters when they blew open at altitude. The worst was a Turkish Airlines that crashed just outside Paris in 1974. The door had not been correctly closed, it blew open, collapsing the floor over the cargo bay and wrecking the control lines. More than 300 people died.
The second was a United 747 in 1991 whose cargo door blew open over the Pacific. Incredibly the crew got the plane back to Honolulu, but some people did die when part of the deck collapsed in the blow out. In this case, the accident was down to inferior locking bolts, IIRC, Boeing only conceded liability when families of the deceased paid for their own investigation.
I was about to mention the DC10, whose "engineers" disregarded fail-safe engineering principles with the surely inevitable consequences of having faulty doors blow open at altitude with catastrophic consequences. I made a point of asking what sort of jet my long-haul flight would be before booking, and if it was a DC10, telling the airline that was why I'd be flying with someone else.
Didn't know that Boeing had ever embraced that same stupidity.
The other reasons for never flying on a DC10 were being stuck in the middle of 2-5-2 seating arrangements (*why* not 3-3-3? ), and having ridiculously thin overhead luggage compartments that a standard-sized cabin bag would not fit into. Horrible, horrible airliner.
Rather like trying to commit suicide by slitting your wrists horizontally it is a common misconception that it is actually possible to open the cabin door whilst the plane is airbourne. The door is designed for this.
The physical process of opening the door requires it to be pulled inwards - The air pressure inside the cabin is high in comparison to the external wind rushing past at 600mph - and then pushed forwards into the flow air, before even the pressure seal is broken.
This combination actually makes it totally impossible for anyone to try to make a silk-less leap of faith at 30,000 feet.
I am still confused when I hear of people trying to open cabin door inflight, even more confusd when they get arrested afterwards. How can you be arrested for attempting to do the impossible?
Great article, so many innuendos in one piece!
Yes you CAN open the door in theory, but the way it normally works is they open INWARDS so the pressure differential is against you (the door is actually held closed by the pressurization of the cabin) so it's extremely unlikely. Anyway, that's one reason to keep your seatbelt fastened when seated...
"you have to wonder at the logic"
You read the article and how it said she had a *panic* attack right?
If you've never had one, consider yourself lucky. You stop thinking logically and behave in a very basic fight/flight manner - the fact that the door wouldn't open, or if it did it you would die wouldn't get past first brain cell.
However, having said that there is a case here for this woman not to be on a flight without some form of medication having *been* taken. i.e. if you don't have your meds - you don't fly kind of thing. The other passengers and crew do have a right not to be suddenly decompressed and shot out of a tiny hole in the side of a large metal cylinder at 30000ft after all.
I should have reread that post. I meant the logic of the police since there wasn't any danger to the other passengers - though I imagine they were pretty scared.
I've found the article now; turns out it was a French woman in Australia, so I apologise to the Aussie's for that: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/scared-tourist-tried-to-open-plane-door-for-smoke/2005/11/21/1132421591925.html
"She should be thankful she wasn't arrested."
Presumably she was better looking than the Aussie woman :-)
"Considering the design of airplane cabin doors makes it impossible to open at altitude, you have to wonder at the logic..."
I wondered that - we may as well start reporting crazy people who start jumping up and down in an attempt to shake the aeroplane out of the sky..
Atmospheric pressure at 8000ft (approx cabin pressure at altitude): 76.7 kPa or 76700 N/m2
Atmospheric pressure at 30000ft: 30.7 kPa or 30700 N/m2
Approx area of cabin door: 2m x 1m, or 2 m2
Approx force required to open cabin door at altitude: 92000 N
That is equivalent to trying to lift over 9 tons/tonnes. Don't think it's going to open. In fact, the pressure change going from sea level to just 500 ft altitude would require a force equivalent to lifting 375 kg to open the door.
I would have used El Reg units but a "register ton" is a unit of volume. Typical.
You hear this and its counterpart "Cabin doors to automatic" on every flight over the tannoy from the flight deck. I've always assumed it was transferring control of any interlocking system to the flight deck, to be released in conjunction with other emergency systems in the appropriate circumstances and to prevent any possibility of release without authority.
Dumb thing to do, but as someone who has suffered panic attacks on and off for years, I really can sympathise. Actually dying might well be a great deal less scary.
by a member of the cabin crew, that the rear and forward doors have explosive bolts in them, that juring take off and landing can be fired from the cockpit. the little side window door on small planes doesn't have this and you will be able to open the door when the cabin pressure is equalized. Flying to india last year there was a little 5 yrld boy playing with one of the doors mid flight.. options.
1. Smack the little f'ker.
2. Pull him away from the door and find someone to look after him
3. return to my seat, fasten the seatbelt and order more whiskey..
Close. Automatic on the doors means that they are armed so that the escape slides will be deployed if the door is opened. Setting them to manual when the plane arrives at the airport disarms the slides so the door can be opened without turning the plane into a theme park attraction.
Cross-check is where each member of the cabin crew checks the work of their partner on the other side of the plane.
Mine's the one which must not be inflated until after leaving the aircraft.
Given how I was nearly arrested for standing on the wrong side of the white line while at the front of the queue at the Passport/Immigration desk going into Philadelphia, the idea that someone could be decked for holding the (un-openable) door doesn't surprise me.
I've heard this argument for "banging up" people who try to open cabin doors at altitude and endanger an aircraft.
I was always under the impression that the doors cannot be opened when there is a pressure difference - they are effectively locked until the plane gets to a low altitude.
Can anyone confirm?
Airliner doors DO NOT open if you pull the handle in flight. You can yank the handle for all it is worth the door opens inwards and the cabin pressure pushes it out with the force equivalent to a small elephant sitting on top of it.
The pressure has to be equalised first as a part of the aircraft being damaged on emergency landing or via the environmental controls.
Passenger cabin doors, even if on 'local', cannot be opened as the pressure differential between internal and external air atmospheres makes it absolutely impossible, let alone the fact that even to open them in proper circumstances is difficult.
The regular exit doors have to be pulled inwards, rotated, then pushed out.
The only doors that open in flight with any regularity are cargo doors, some of which only need swing out - Boeing aircraft have had several instances where their cargo doors opened because the safety mechanisms were poorly designed and manufactured. In one case a coffin dropped in to Ontario!
So let the big breasted air-heads try their best, they won't make it.
... the main reason people get charged with offences when they try this (even though like you've said it is impossible to open the doors), is the panic that it can cause on a flight.
It is not common knowledge that Airline doors cannot be opened in flight and even for a large number of people who suspect it might be the case, they're still not 100% sure (just check the comments on this article from supposedly technical people).
So for those people who dont know about the impossibility, what do they see? Someone who they think is trying to cause the aircraft to crash. Whats the likely outcome? Panic and pandemonium on the aircraft, as some of the more action driven people rush to tackle this person and lets face it they're unlikely to be polite about it to either the person trying to open the door or to anyone in their way to getting to that person. This will lead to a great deal of injuries, shouting and screaming in the cabin, people running around and basic chaos. This could quite quickly lead to distractions in the cockpit as the pilots think something is happening in the cabin (terrorist attack maybe?) and you are then walking a very quick path to disaster.
This is the thinking of the authorities when they look at an event like this, so i have no problem with the person being charged. In this case, she's gotten off because of the Panic attack and whilst i can understand that to some degree, the fact is that she boarded the flight without taking her meds knowing that a Panic attack was a likely event. Really that sort of negligence on her part should see her get some sort of punishment - community service would seem a fitting punishment ot me...
Anyway just my 2p...
You must just *love* it when the writer of the article sets them up like this. Did you do anything to annoy them at all?
Must be editing a lot of them out, because I don't see to many above to be honest.. just more pointless people re-stating the mechanics of the pressurised door. Do people not read comments before posting these days?
Apart from the simple physics of it making a puny human opening the door at alititude impossible, don't they also install and lock huge bolt through a number of key points?
I fly regularly with BA and see them install/remove number of bolts into the door frame on take off and landing that I presumed were to secure the door until they wanted to let people out?
No, what they are doing is "arming" the doors - or, to be more specific, arming the emergency chutes located in that bulbous bit at the bottom of the door - and placing a piece of plastic a certain way to show whether the door is "armed" or not.
An armed door deploys the chute automatically when it is opened. An unarmed door simply opens.
Just think of the consequences of a locked door failing to auto-unlock because of, say, mechanical damage, after a survivable on-the-ground collision that starts a small fire ... actually you do regularly see reports of this disaster having happened in a dodgy nightclub or hotel somewhere or other.
Thinking about it I'm surprised that same disaster never befell a DC10, which did have doors that bolted shut to stop them blowing open at altitude (mostly ). Or did it?
I always wonder why people care when some berk tries to open an airliner door in flight.
1) it's locked
2) You have to pull the door inwards, swing it, then push it back through the hole to open it. The airliner is pressurised, so there's a few tons of air pushing the door against it's frame. Unless you simultaneously de-pressurise the plane, you've no chance (same concept as opening a car door under water).
Much better to sit there laughing at them while they tire themselves out heaving on the handle. Worst they'll do is bend the handle.
Having suffered them myself on and off for years, I can tell you, logic is the last thing on your mind.
So while I can't blame her entirely for that in particular...
On the other hand, not travelling with your meds? Stupid.
Kinda like blaming your actions on your being drunk, when you had to be perfectly sober to start drinking in the first place...
Cheers. :-)
An Arab male might have been tackled and wrestled to the ground in a very undignified manner - people are less worried about tackling men than they are women - but it seems to me that Aircraft staffs are supposed to be trained to recognise things like panic attacks. A great many people suffer from them, and they are /ENTIRELY/ involuntary. Nobody CHOOSES to have a panic attack. The really lucky sufferers of them can sense them coming and take a pill to try to ward them off, but the very involuntary nature of them makes panic attacks all the more devastating.
I would never put a good bout of xenophobic racism past our American overlords…but panic attacks really would have to be something that airline staff (like bus drivers and other such mass transit personnel) would have to be trained to recognise. They are simply a fact of life.
How does one distinguish a wild-eyed Arab terrorist attacker from a wild-eyed Arab panic attacker? Neither would have a bomb-vest (as a rule), both would likely be screaming, and both would likely be of a Middle Eastern appearance.
I know! If one kills you, he's a terrorist!
Mine's the one without the bomb vest.
People are now so jittery that leaning down to tie your shoelace on an airliner might be enough to induce fear and terror in some of the more paranoid passengers. God help you if you sneeze or fart, biological and chemical attacks are especially fear-inducing.
Then again, perhaps we can use that criteria to put political advertisement creators and cable news opinion pundits in orange jumpsuits, since they mostly deal in fearmongering to an easily scared audience.
I was under the impression that a panic attack referred to an involuntary condition affecting the autonomic nervous system which can be mistaken for a heart attack. The victim starts hyperventilating, sweating, heart races, victim thinks he/she can't breathe, is scared he/she is about to die. I wasn't aware that it had any effect at all on voluntary acts, beyond (understandably) requesting emergency medical attention and/or a priest.
Or maybe a last beer?
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So given that it's impossible to open plug doors physically - would I be arrested if I sat in my seat ad said "open sesame" after all it's about as much danger to the aircraft.
There was an incident in australia where an oxygen bottle blew up and happened to hit the door arm opening it - but the door still didn't open.
>The New York Post reports that sources said Livingston was in the throes of a panic attack, and did not have her usual medication with her
Does said medication have a name with "Colombian" in it?
Flippancy aside, this sounds like a good argument for Soma in the air systems on planes. Maybe it would shut up those damn kids too.
Planes depressurize on the ground and on ascent.
If you have an altimeter on your watch you can confirm this easily enough.
Up until the aircraft exceeds the altitude where the pressure becomes less than in the aircraft, the pressure differential is, in fact in your favour (as a door opening mentalist)
As has been mentioned before, the plan is depressurised to around 8000-10000 feet equivalent.
So, roughly speaking until the plane is higher than 10K, it would be a peice of piss to open the doors.
And I would suggest that 9000 feet is still 'at altitude'.
Perhaps one of the more commited El Reg commentards can test this fact out on their next Ryan Air flight ?
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