Just like the human body can only survive in a certain range of temperatures, it can only survive in a certain range of pressures. So what happens to your body when an airplane cabin is not pressurized? If planes were pressurized at ground level, they would have to be made with heavier materials and use more fuel. This is not only for passengers’ comfort but also for operational purposes. Pressure in the cabin is maintained by the opening and closing of an outflow valve, which releases incoming air at a rate regulated by pressure sensors (Air & Space Smithsonian says to “think of a pressurized cabin as a balloon that has a leak but is being inflated continuously”). Finally, the cooled air is combined with air already in the cabin using a mixer, or manifold. On its way to the cabin, the air temperature is lowered via two different cooling systems and then an expansion turbine, which “cools it the way blowing with your lips pursed results in a cool flow of air,” according to Air & Space Smithsonian. Pressurization happens via the engines, which compress incoming air, heat it up, and then divert some of that hot compressed air to the cabin. How airplanes are pressurizedĪll airplane cabins are pressurized to simulate the amount of pressure felt at 8,000 feet. While that won’t actually happen, here’s what does happen in the event of loss of pressure in an airplane cabin. Stories like these perpetuate the fear we all have when stepping into a steel behemoth whizzing through the sky at 36,000 feet: that something completely out of our control will go wrong, causing our brains to ooze out of our ears. And, of course, there was the tragic incident this April of the woman who died after being partially sucked out of a Southwest Airlines plane window that was broken by an engine explosion. Of the 166 passengers on board, 30 experienced symptoms, and five were sent to the hospital to get their ears, noses, and throats evaluated.Īccording to a statement by Jet Airways, the flight crew has been “taken off scheduled duties pending investigation.”Ī Ryanair flight from Croatia to Dublin encountered the same situation in July and had to make an emergency landing after deploying oxygen masks (one flyer even tweeted out a photo of his bloodied mask). The cause? A crew member forgot to flip the switch to pressurize the cabin. The flight eventually deployed oxygen masks and made an emergency landing. On Thursday morning, passengers on a Jet Airways flight traveling from Mumbai to Jaipur, India, began experiencing headaches and nosebleeds. The never-ending nightmare that is commercial flying just added a rather horrifying new potential mishap to its roster.
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