What Happens if an Airplane Door Opens During Flight?

If you have taken at least one flight in your life, odds are you quickly noticed the sealed nature of aircraft; the doors stay shut and the windows cannot open. Although opening aircraft doors at any stage of flight is illegal, opening an aircraft door at high altitudes is virtually impossible and potentially deadly. Furthermore, since the air pressure inside and outside of the cabin is different, an opening would cause the cabin to depressurize. While all attempts have been unsuccessful, with most leading to an $80,000 fine from the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), this blog will explore the hypothetical series of events that would play out if an airplane door were opened during flight.

As you go higher in the atmosphere, the air becomes thinner and lower in pressure per square inch (psi). The thinner air at these altitudes is impossible for human beings to breathe, so cabins are pressurized to ideal conditions. Because of this pressure difference, to open the door at cruising altitude would require 24,000 pounds of force. That being said, if a door was hypothetically opened at this height, the cabin would depressurize, and a strong suction effect would suck out the air, people, and loose objects from the plane.

In addition to the laws of both the FAA and physics, an airplane door is firmly sealed and can only be opened prior to flight, before the plane has been pressurized. Similar to a drain plug, an airplane door stays in place due to interior pressure, wherein about 1,100 pounds of pressure act against each square foot of the airplane's door. For example, a door that is 6 feet tall and 3.5 feet wide would require a person to exert 10.9 metric tons of force to open it at cruising altitude. Even at low altitudes, because airplane doors are also held securely with electrical and mechanical latches, you would still need a large amount of force to open a plane's door.

If the laws magically bent for a day and someone accomplished getting an airplane door open at cruising altitude, a number of disasters would occur. First, as mentioned before, this would force all unfastened people and items out of the door caused by a strong suction effect generated by pressure differences. Furthermore, temperature and oxygen levels in the cabin would quickly plummet and passengers without oxygen masks would be deprived of oxygen, resulting in hypoxia.

Despite all of the impossibilities and dangers previously discussed, there are times where the doors must be used. For example, during emergencies, pilots will descend to low altitudes and depressurize the cabin to let the airplane doors be opened. If anyone other than pilots or crew attempted to open this door, the surrounding crew and passengers would try to stop them, and the passenger attempting to open an airplane door would be taken into custody and face criminal charges, ranging from a major fine to a prison sentence.

With extreme safety threats as a potential for any malfunctioning doors, windows, and other critical aircraft parts, it is important to only source your aviation parts from a reliable distributor like Aviation Integrated. Owned and operated by ASAP Semiconductor, we offer access to an unparalleled inventory of over 2 billion new, used, obsolete, and hard-to-find items from trusted manufacturers around the globe. With rapid lead times and competitive pricing, make us your go-to procurement partner today to start fulfilling all of your top-quality aviation part needs "as soon as possible, as simple as possible."