Posted on 09/26/2013 12:03:19 PM PDT by oxcart
Flying can be a mysterious experience: Planes are incredibly complicated, even scary machines, and pilots and flight attendants don't tell you too much about what's going on.
So it makes sense that people believe all sorts of interesting "facts" about air travel.
The problem is, a lot of them aren't true.
From "you get drunk faster in the air" to "the air in planes is riddled with germs," here are 10 airplane myths that needed to be debunked.
1. Opening a plane door while in flight is a real safety risk.
It isn't. When the plane is at cruising altitude, it's pressurized. That pressure means that getting a door open would require superhuman strength.
To quote Patrick Smith, an airline pilot, blogger, and author of Cockpit Confidential: "You cannot – repeat, cannot – open the doors or emergency hatches of an airplane in flight. You can’t open them for the simple reason that cabin pressure won’t allow it."
So don't worry about the occasional passenger going nuts and everyone flying out of the plane as the result of an opened door, it isn't going to happen. Which leads us to the next myth...
2. A small hole in a plane will lead to everyone being sucked right out.
Patrick Smith notes that while bombs and large-scale structural failures can cause disastrous, rapid decompression, a small hole in a plane's fuselage is a different matter.
After a foot-long breach in an Alaska Airlines MD-80 plane led to an emergency descent in 2006, Smith wrote in his Salon column: "The breach was a small one, and once the cabin pressure had escaped, it could be reasonably assumed that the plane was going to stay in one solid piece and fly just fine. Which it did."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
“Pilots don’t control the airflow to save on costs, they control the air temperature to save fuel costs.”
I don’t understand your statement. In the jets I fly there is a thermostat that controls cabin temperature. The range is from about 65 to 85 degrees. It modulates a valve that controls the cooling effect on the air used for pressurization. The fuel flow meters do not change in the slightest as I change the temperature.
What is the basis for your statement?
11. The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the red zone.
Or say “take that (fill in the city)”! My reply was always “sometimes the runway will jump up at you”.
Of course, it was probably 20 years ago - so....
Not true...pressurization is controlled from the cockpit and the back of the bus folks have nothing to do with it..and yes I was an airline pilot...
The doors open in, not out. Pressurization works to keep the door closed.
You can get stuck, but only if your body forms a perfect seal on the vacuum toilet. This is difficult to do. Adam Savage of "Mythbusters" tried it out, and despite serious suction, got up without a problem. But it's still probably a good idea to stand before flushing.
You'd have to be a perfect a$$hole. :-)
Even Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime couldn't open one of those doors. It takes over 10,000 pounds of force to counteract the air pressure differential between the inside and outside.
That was from the rear air stairs door on a 727. They were controlled from the cockpit. After that incident in 1972, the rear door and stairs on all 727's were modified to make them inoperable in flight. Have you flown on a 727 recently? Just about all the 727's still in airline service at the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 were retired by the end of 2001.
uh...D.B. Cooper!?!?!?!
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The stairs on a 727-100 are outside the (pressurized) “cigar” ,, the door leading to the stairs is not subject to intense negative pressure as it is protected from the airstream by the stairs ,,, with D.B. they were opened with a very low airspeed ,, a speed that would have allowed the hydraulics to operate the stairs.
“12. Objects heavier than air can’t fly.”
So. . .they beat the air into submission?
;-)
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That would be a helicopter.
Even an Olympic class weight lifter couldn't open them. The doors are wedge shaped. The cabin side edgse of are larger than the outside edges of the door. There are literally tens of thousands of pounds of force forcing the door into the door frame.
I understood the post. Your explanation makes no sense at all.
>>>Apples & Oranges.
Also, if you don’t drive drunk, wear your seatbelt, excessively speed or you are over the age of 25 then your chances of dying in car accident go way, way, way, way down.
Meanwhile you can do all those and it won’t matter if your plane goes down<<<
Not true. There is another drunk speeding idiot under 25 itching to kill you in head-on collision.
I believe Boeing and Lockheed, make aircraft with doors that can open in flight.
C-17 and C-130.
“11. Flying is safer than driving”
way safer!!!
by the way, I’ve crashed and totaled one airplane.
I just did a short Google search, and found some articles on older Boeing 747s where this was possible.
-PJ
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