That's an interesting statement. It is my theory that much of the crazy behavior, some of which approaches psychotic behavior on airline flights, is because of oxygen deprivation, just because the airlines desire for squeezing the last penny out of every flight.
“That’s an interesting statement. It is my theory that much of the crazy behavior, some of which approaches psychotic behavior on airline flights, is because of oxygen deprivation, just because the airlines desire for squeezing the last penny out of every flight.”
Even under the best of circumstances, the oxygen levels in an airliner cabin are a good deal less than what one experiences at sea-level. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I recall that at cruise altitudes, the cabin can be at 7 or 8,000 ft. Naturally, as you postulate, to save fuel, raising the cabin altitude to 10,000 ft would help. The other thing is that whenever one of the pilot is off the flight deck (like in the head), the other pilot has to put on his oxygen mask. So their masks are available to them to take care of any adverse affects attributable to higher than normal cabin pressurization altitude. The other thing is that the plane can only operate with a certain hull pressure differential, so the higher it flies, the higher the cabin must go along with it so that the delta p is maintained at a safe level.