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...

[Aphrika]

I was commenting on the survivability of it, not the cause. In the case of the Aloha incident, it's interesting to note the high number of injuries to survivors who were in the plane, no doubt some were caused by environmental rather than physical trauma.

In any case, planes are design with blow out panels, there's some speculation as to the exact cause of 243, but nevertheless it had a huge impact on aircraft design and safety.

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.

It's pretty well known...

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

....you spend six confusing years on an island with a bunch of strangers and a polar bear.

Hopefully you adapt quickly and learn to hate flashbacks and flashforwards.

They must have overlooked this

[houghi]

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

Re:They must have overlooked this

[nettdata]

Just to add to this, and to see the theory at work, you can do this simple exercise (like we did at flight school).

Open a can of some liquid. Coke, Pepsi, whatever.
Get a straw, and cut it so that the bottom end can be submerged a bit in the liquid, and the top end is about an inch over the opening in the can.
Blow across the top of the straw.
Liquid will come out, even though you're at the same altitude.

Same concept here, but with 400+ knot windspeed.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

We're talking about like half of one atmosphere, here. I don't think you're going to get the bends.

Re:Not really

[Intrepid imaginaut]

You don't get bonus points for "but he survived to feel the impact" on your autopsy report.

There is no effing achievement for that!

Meh, I'd rather not be put down in my sleep like an ailing pet, thanks. More seriously though, the will to survive is probably the single most important factor in any survival situation, closely followed by knowledge of what to do in your environment. Its shocking how many people just give up, lie down and die, sometimes when help was close at hand. Keeping your spirits up is vital, even if you've just been sucked out of a plane! :D

Re:Not really

[Intrepid imaginaut]

I'd rather be thinking "Hey I can see my house from here, wheeeeeeeee" than spending my last few minutes in blind animal terror. Sure, the last thing going through my mind would probably be my feet, but that's no reason to quit!

Re:Not really

[th1nk]

You don't get bonus points for "but he survived to feel the impact" on your autopsy report.

No, but if you're already a goner you might as well have some fun with it.

I've decided that if I manage to survive the exit and the falling, I'm going to aim for someone's swimming pool and then yell CANNONBALL during my last few seconds. Hopefully someone is around to witness it.

Re:Not really

[huge]

Oxygen pre-breathing is required for high altitude skydiving to avoid DCS. I'd assume that rapid decompression in the plane would subject you to the same risks.

Re:Not really

[Intrepid imaginaut]

That's about as useful as saying "whoever wants it more will win the game", along with a list of other mind-over-matter clichés.

Not really. One example that I can think of (I haven't the details handy) was when two liferafts were deployed from a sinking ship, same equipment in each, same number of people. In one the captain lost the run of himself, didn't keep up discipline, and eventually ended up dying, while the people in his raft were malnourished and near death when recovered. On the other raft however the first mate maintained discipline, kept up spirits, and his guys were able to get into the recovery ship unassisted.

Mental attitude makes all the difference.

Re:Not really

[rgbatduke]

But as soon as you got to low altitudes, opening up your arms a la skydivers would very rapidly take you back to terminal velocity for that position, which can range from 38 to 54 km/sec. I like HELP (the posture) until you get down to ten thousand feet or so, facing flat down splayed and with your jackets and clothing as spread out as possible to try to get your speed down to the better side of 40 m/sec and for the rest of the way down looking for a place that might cushion the impact, and steering for it to the extent you can manage. A fair number of people have survived free falls from airplanes high enough that it doesn't matter, terminal velocity was easily reached, a very few of them so lightly injured that they can even "walk away", although more commonly they barely survive and that only if medical help is immediately at hand.

Surviving here is like winning a game of egg-toss where you are the egg. You need to spread your de-acceleration out over the longest distance possible in impact. The equation involved (assuming uniform acceleration) is v^2 = 2 a H where H is the stopping distance and a is the acceleration experienced while stopping. Humans have survived a \approx 100 g, or a stopping distance of roughly one meter for an initial velocity of 45 m/sec (100 mph). They do better, of course, if the stopping distance is 2-3 meters, or if one is travelling more slowly -- the square means that a comes down rapidly with v so that stopping from 38 km/sec (roughly 80 mph, terminal velocity if you have e.g. a large overcoat and "parachute" it to slow your rate of fall) over 2 meters is only 37 g's of acceleration. a > 50 g makes it pretty unlikely to survive.

So what are good targets? Hay rolls out in fields -- good for a bullseye although you need a pretty big one in a soft, plowed field to be carried away with a ruptured spleen and subdural hematoma but alive. Tightly packed pine forest -- acually better, if you avoid skewering directly onto a tree and your head and kidneys take the punching from the branches as they break, because you might slow down over 5 to 10 meters, where the latter reduces a to 20g, easily survivable and you could even walk away from it . Big bushes of any sort better than hard ground, the bigger (taller) and denser the better. Spongy loam better than concrete (maybe a peat bog?). Deep water better than normal ground, but...

Water carries its own risks. It is an incompressible fluid and quite dense and you can't breathe it when unconscious, so hitting it in, say, a belly-flopper will just cause you to pop. Hitting water that is foamy on top (so that the water contains a lot of air bubbles that can act as a shock absorber) is better than hitting still water. Hitting water that has any sort of "splash" underway on the surface is good, as it might let you get a foot into the water on your way down and start to push the water sideways out of the way in some sort of turbulent flow instead of having to just push it all aside in front of you. The usual prescription for survival here is to fall splayed until quite close, then go straight up vertical, feet first, toes pointed (streamline), arms over head, and clench that sphincter for the 100 mph enema! You'll probably break your legs on the impact, but the rest of the shock will be transmitted up your spine, which is actually quite strong, and if your head is at the right angle your spine may not be jammed up into your brain or your head may not whip down so hard that it snaps your neck. In that case, if you aren't knocked out and don't mind dog paddling with possibly splintered leg bones and broken ankles, hey, you might survive long enough for a nearby boat to get you out.

So what are the odds? Miniscule, of course. Teensy. Small indeed. Perhaps not much better than if you do nothing at all and let luck determine if you hit that perfect pine forest or the trash pile at the foam rubber factory. But hey, it's something to do on the way down besides just going "Oooooh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttt....." and watching the ground reach up to swat you into oblivion.

rgb

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.

What about long fall survivors ?

[Pastis]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Magee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Chisov

a bit different (and controversal) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulović

Re:I've actually thought about this

[r.stallman]

Correct, in fact this same thing happened to me once. I whipped out my Win7 Mobile device and thanks to it's superior 3G coverage was able to quickly refer to VirtualEarth on the way down. I then used the great new SQL/Server spatial extensions to work out the best trajectory and walked away with only a few scratches. After my smooth landing MapPoint guided me to the nearest pub so really it turned a potential disaster into a great day out, thanks again Microsoft!

Re:News

[JustOK]

yah, but Real people was finally cancelled in 1984 because of low ratings.

Re:No

[mr100percent]

As I said in an earlier post, Aloha Airlines had 20 feet of walls and ceiling suddenly tear off the fuselage. The only death was a flight attendant who was in the aisle at the time, I'm sure the 700 mile an hour wind and immediate turbulence is what made her fall out, not some sudden pressure change of only 8.5psi. Mythbusters tested it, even detonating explosives on the window in the pressurized plane didn't knock Buster out of his seat.

Hollywood put this idea in everyone's minds that everyone gets sucked out into space, like Goldfinger, if you shoot out a window on a plane. Just doesn't happen that way.

Re:I've actually thought about this

[St.Creed]

I remember a story of WW2 where a crewmember from a flying fortress (tailgunner I believe) couldn't reach his chute due to fire raging on the plane. So he decided to jump rather than burn. During the fall he got unconscious and fell into a pine forest covered with heavy snow. He survived with minor injuries.

Another case was a parachute jumper who got tangled in the cords, chute produced some drag but impact was still way above 100 Km/hr. Fortunately it was a former swamp and the ground tended to give way a bit. Everything fracturable was fractured on the impact points (she even managed to get those points correct as per training) but the woman remained conscious and survived.

I think though that when you drop out at 30.000 feet you will lose your consciousness quite soon and don't have much say in what happens. Which will usually be for the best.

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.

It ain't necessarily so

[Simon Brooke]

According to several of the police officers and volunteer helpers at the Lockerbie incident (Pan Am flight 103) whom I have personally spoken to, a substantial number of the passengers were not dead when initially found, although none survived. The cockpit came down in a field 150 metres from the house of a friend of mine. In the opinion of those witnesses what killed the passengers was injuries sustained in their impact with the ground, not the fall itself.

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:Sign, discovery showing its high standards agai

[Ogive17]

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.

What happened to the pilot and what the Mythbusters did are two completely different things. By the way, don't you remember when one of the front windows of the plane they were using blew out and sucked everything from the cockpit, including seat cushions, out the window? But that wasn't their test, their test was if a bullet hole would cause catastrophic failure, which it didn't.

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.

Do you know how silly that is? I guess they should next test if humans can fly since Super Man can do it.... but somehow they need to find a real superhuman first. What could would it be for a fantasy shark do fantasy damage? Their test was if a great white could actually do that type of damage. In order to test something worthwhile, they tried to make the scenario as realistic as they could.

I'm not going to say Mythbusters does everything right all the time. But your are trying to compare apples to oranges with your examples.

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.