Get in a plane filled with smoke and see how long it takes you to try to open a window with any method available.
He is fortunate he is not planning a funeral for his wife. This clip is more a relating of emotion than an educated engineer comment on a viable system. Although a method to introduce air safely into a cabin that is filled with a toxin could be a great invention...
Having been through fires on submarines, I can tell you the atmosphere goes away FAST.
IIRC, the procedure in some airliners for a smoke filled cockpit is to get down to 10K feet and open the cockpit windows...
Bet he was thinking of the forced landing his wife’s plane made and his comment came from wondering why the windows don’t open in case of emergency (on the ground) like bus windows.
“Although a method to introduce air safely into a cabin that is filled with a toxin could be a great invention...”
It has already been invented over 60 years ago for pressurized aircraft. On the Lockheed Electra/Navy P-3 aircraft it is called “Aux Vent”, and with one switch activation, cabin pressure is immediately dumped out of an emergency valve in the front of the aircraft and the outflow valve in the rear (that is normally used to modulate/maintain cabin air pressure). It works at any altitude, so above 10K ft. altitude, everyone aboard should immediately find auxiliary breathing oxygen or risk passing out until the aircraft completes an emergency descent to a lower altitude (which may take several minutes). The purpose is to starve onboard fires of oxygen and evacuate smoke.
JC