How could a passenger open the door of a still-flying airplane? The question comes the day after the incident in which a dozen passengers on an Asiana Airlines Airbus A321 received minor injuries. “We are in the process of investigating the origin of this incident. “As a rule, the doors of the aircraft cannot be unlocked before the device has touched the ground,” said the European aircraft manufacturer in Paris on Saturday.
On Friday afternoon, as the plane was about 200m off the ground and approaching the runway at Daegu International Airport in South Korea, a man in his 30s opened the emergency exit door he was sitting near. He told police he felt he was “being choked” and wanted to get out of the device “quickly.” The plane landed safely, but about ten people were hospitalized with breathing difficulties.
VIDEO. Big shock in the middle of the flight: A passenger opens the door of the plane shortly before landing
“Fortunately, at this altitude (200 m) there is no or very little depressurization because the pressure inside the cabin is almost the same as outside,” explains Bertrand Vilmer, aviation expert at the consultancy Icare. So the seated and handcuffed passengers were not “sucked dry”.
Automatically locked
On the other hand, in a high-altitude flight accident, a sudden decompression phenomenon might occur. For example, if an airplane flies at cruising altitude (10,000 m) and one of its doors opens, the air pressure in the cabin, which must be maintained at a pressure corresponding to a flight altitude of 2,400 m, drops sharply near the opening can be very violent.
Except that a door at this height cannot be opened because it is electronically blocked. In addition, emergency exits are not designed to be opened during flight. “Almost all aircraft exits open inwards. Some retract up into the ceiling, others pivot outward, but they open inward first,” says Patrick Smith, airline pilot and author of the Ask The Pilot blog.
However, at high altitude, the pressure difference between the inside of the cabin and the outside is so great that it would take superhuman strength to pull the door toward you and open it. “Atmospheric pressure on the plane acts like a plug, forcing the door to stay in place,” summarizes Xavier Tytelman, flight safety specialist.
If, on the other hand, the pressure difference is lower or non-existent, a passenger has the power to open the emergency exit. For this, however, the first security, the automatic locking, must be lifted. This mitigates when the difference in air pressure inside and outside the aircraft is very small, such as when the aircraft “had a roll rate or is about to land,” says Bertrand Vilmer. In the case of the South Korea incident, the plane was three minutes from landing.