What Happens If You Get Sucked Out of a Plane?

astroengine writes "We've all wondered about it. When flying at 30,000ft, you look around the cramped economy class cabin thinking 'I wonder if I'd survive being sucked out of this plane if a hole, say, just opened above my head?' That's probably around the time that you should fasten your seat belt. According to medical experts interviewed by Discovery News in the wake of the Southwest Airlines gaping hole incident, the rapid depressurization, low oxygen levels and freezing cold would render you unconscious very quickly. Assuming you don't get chopped in half as you exit through the hole and hit the tail, you'd be long dead before you hit the ground. Nice."

Comments

This has sadly happened...

[Aphrika]

A flight attendant was killed when she was blown out of Aloha Airlines flight 243 back in 1988.

The plane landed with a huge section of fuselage missing, but the other passengers survived. Not a trip I'd like to be on, and makes the Southwest incident look minor in comparison.

Re:This has sadly happened...

[AHuxley]

Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390 the left windscreen failed at 17300 feet and the captain was sucked 1/2 out.

Re:This has sadly happened...

[damburger]

He survived, but only just. Until the paramedics got there the crew were convinced he was long dead.

They must have overlooked this

[houghi]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390

Re:Why, oh why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Either google images is lying to me or pornographers are losing the art of creative naming.

Inspired by the headline, I searched for 'gaping hole incident' intending to report on the panoply of eye-gouging horror, yet lo and behold the first page is not only boring, it's SFW. Taking a tip from a result pertaining to a sinkhole, 'absurdly large gaping hole' was similarly disappointing. It was necessary to revert to such pedestrian language as "big gaping hole" to elicit the predicted flood of distended anus pictures; The legendary master and lord of all such things never appeared on any of the first three pages.

The Internet seems to be losing its edge...

Not really

[Joce640k]

30,000 feet is about as high as Everest. People have walked up Everest and survived... ...in fact I'm not sure I believe their conclusions. You'd be down to almost 'normal' conditions in about a minute.

People have survived half an hour at altitudes higher than that, eg. Ewa Wisnierska.

Re:Not really

[cpghost]

Those who walked up the Everest had time to depressurize very slowly. Every diver will tell you what happens if you depressurize too fast.

Re:Not really

[ColdWetDog]

Yes, that's how Outward Bound got started (the realization that numerous Merchant Marine crews torpedoed in WWII were dying when they really could have survived with training and a better mental attitude). However, the physics of floating in a lifeboat and bailing out at 30,000 feet without gear are slightly different.

Re:Not really

[rgbatduke]

There are a lot of records of people who have fallen at terminal velocity and survived, and even walked away from it, if by a lot you mean one in a thousand or so. I enjoy telling all of this to my students when I teach them about drag forces and terminal velocity in intro physics which is why I have a good patter for it. If you look up "g force" and "terminal velocity" on wikipedia they have cross references of some of the people who have survived, by name, but during WW II there were a lot more that didn't get recorded -- people who fell or were shot out of planes at 10,000 to 16,000 feet without a chute but managed to walk away.

There is also a section in the Survival Guide (humor) book that you'll see in bookstores from time to time on this, and articles such as http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/safety/4344036 that again cross-reference previous occurrences. Documented no-airplane instances of survival are pretty rare, but there are a few that stand up to investigative test, and even a website devoted to this one subject (of course): http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/ffresearch.html

Anyway, Enjoy. These sites between them give you most of what is known about what is after all a very unlikely thing. Don't forget your trench coat and "Prove You're No Terrorist -- Fly Naked!" tank-top tee shirt and g-string for your next flight! Just remember that the g-string does not, in the end, help much with the terminal g-force (and what that final pa-da-pam, I'll stop:-).

rgb

Re:Not really

[JWSmythe]

What do we need test monkeys for, when we've had a real human "volunteer".

    Capt. Timothy Lancaster, British Airways Flight 5390, June 10, 1990. 23,000 feet, 500mph.

    One of the cockpit windshields was improperly secured after a repair, and blew out. He was sucked out of the cabin, and his leg caught on the controls. The flight crew managed to grab his feet and hold on through landing, before he made a full egress.

    He lost consciousness due to lack of oxygen. In addition, he suffered frostbite, bruising, abrasions, and fractures to his right arm, right wrist, and left thumb, and a dislocated shoulder.

    All in all, survivable (and he did). Most of the injuries would have been due to being pulled out the hole, and being pounded against the aircraft.

    If someone made a clean exit, not damaging themselves on the edges of the hole or other parts of the aircraft, it's a survivable event. They may or may not lose consciousness, depending on their breathing and personal fear level. i.e., us adrenaline junkies would probably remain calm-ish, and survive through the air.

    The least likely part to survive is that unintended intersection between their direction of travel, and a solid mass. (i.e., straight down, and hitting the ground).

    As the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy states about flying, "There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. Its knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that provides the difficulties." I don't know of anyone who has managed the essential second part without artificial help.

Re:I've actually thought about this

[St.Creed]

And here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade

Sign, discovery showing its high standards again

[SmallFurryCreature]

Okay, couple of things going on here. First: The myth busters episode "proofing" you can't be sucked out of aircraft. This was the movie myth that a small hole wouldn't not cause everything inside to be sucked out. HOWEVER, we are not talking about that here, we are talking about a major hole. In the hawaii incident, there was a gigantic hole, the flight attendant was not sucked out movie style but (probably) swept up by the massive wind force that occurs partly simply because aircraft move so fucking fast. Nobody knows how she met her dead. It might be comforting to think she died instantly and without pain... if that helps you sleep at night.

Another incident involved a pilot being SUCKED out through the window in front of him (showing just how wrong the DISCOVERY mythbuster program is in its logic and research). He was SUCKED out and exposed to the cold and lack of oxygen for a long time AND survived.

Another incident involves an aircraft breaking up in mid air, all died but the family got record damages because experts had shown that they most likely survived the break up and were alive and aware the entire way down. Families were from one of the south american countries, maybe chili if you want to google it (to lazy myself).

The simple fact is that Myth Busters is a great example of bad science where they ignore recorded evidence and then twist the experiment until it doesn't resemble to claim at all. The clearest example was the "myth" of Jaws being able to hit a boat. So they tested the myth of a super sized shark hitting a boat, by using a smaller shark because Jaws was an unrealistic size... well? That is the myth, the myth is NOT real shark doing something real shark don't do.

Same with the being sucked out. There is more then one way, and pressure difference isn't the only one. Air rushing past a hole tends to create a sucking force itself (see how your engine sucks fuel up into the air) and a massive hole would create all kind of secondary forces. According to mythbusters, large buildings don't cause winds to rise to such level that they blow people of their feet because the pressure difference ain't big enough. Well, shucks.

So basically, discovery claims things contradicted by their own programs. Guess that answers who takes discovery serious, ABSOLUTELY NOBODY.

Re:It ain't necessarily so

[advocate_one]

I can vouch for this as I was there that night and several days after as one of the search parties tasked with finding and marking the positions of the occupants... not fun at all... very messy.

Re:Instead of speculating, use real data.

[Technician]

A pilot was sucked out the cockpit when the windshield blew out. Only his legs remained inside. How about studying real examples for data instead of speculating what might happen.
http://www.businessinsider.com/jet-pilot-sucked-out-2011-4
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/what-to-do-when-your-pilot-gets-sucked-out-the-plane-window/236860/

Re:five meters deep

[Man Eating Duck]

Here's a question for the divers here: do you need special decompression routines if you dive at five meters for long periods?

PADI certified diver here. No, you don't, as this depth is too shallow to enable dangerous amounts of nitrogen to dissolve in your blood, at least in time spans you can reasonably stay there without getting trouble with hypothermia and exhaustion. Regular dive tables don't even extend to depths shallower than 10 meters, at which you can stay for more than three hours. I'm not certified to make dives that require decompression, that's pro/military territory, but I believe that 3-7 meters are actually common depths for making your last decompression stop.

On a side note: the bends are a real concern when traveling in aircraft; for instance it's highly discouraged to fly less than 24 hours even after a recreational dive that doesn't require decompression. The pressure in the cabin of a normal jet liner is maintained at a level which corresponds to about 2-3 kilometers above sea level. I'd guess that at least some people would have problems with a sudden decompression at up to 12000 meters, as susceptibility to getting the bends varies greatly from person to person. However, I doubt that it would be severe enough to kill you outright before you reach a lower altitude if you were unlucky enough to be sucked out of the plane. It might be a contributing factor (together with cold and trauma) to a fatal circulatory shock, though.