How could a passenger open the door of an airliner still in flight? The question arises in the aftermath of the incident that caused a dozen light injuries among the passengers of an Airbus A321 of Asiana Airlines. "We are looking into the origin of this incident. The doors of the plane can not usually unlock before the aircraft has touched the ground, "says this Saturday to the Parisian the European aircraft manufacturer.
On Friday afternoon, when the plane was still about 200 meters above the ground and approaching the runway of Daegu International Airport in South Korea, a man in his thirties opened the emergency exit near which he was sitting. To the police, he said he felt that he was "suffocating" and wanted to get out of the device "quickly". The plane was able to land safely, but a dozen people were taken to hospital for breathing difficulties.
VIDEO. Big scare in mid-flight: a passenger opens the door of the plane just before landing
"Fortunately, at this altitude (200 m) there is no depressurization, or it is very low, because the pressure inside the cabin is almost the same as outside," explains Bertrand Vilmer, an aeronautics expert at the consulting firm Icarus. The passengers, who were seated and tied, were therefore not "sucked out".
Automatically locked
On the other hand, a sudden decompression phenomenon could occur in the event of an aeronautical accident at high altitude. If, for example, an aircraft flies at its cruising altitude (10,000 m) and one of its doors opens, the air pressure inside the cabin, which must be maintained at a pressure corresponding to 2,400 m altitude, will drop sharply and the blast effect will be very violent for people near the opening.
Except that a door cannot open at this height, because itis electronically locked. In addition, emergency exits are not designed to be opened in mid-flight. "Almost all aircraft exits open inward. Some retract upwards into the ceiling, others swing outwards, but they open inwards first," says Patrick Smith, airline pilot and author of the Ask The Pilot blog.
However, at high altitude, the pressure difference between the inside of the cabin and the outside is so strong that it would take superhuman force to pull the door towards you and open it. "The atmospheric pressure in the aircraft acts like a plug and forces the door to stay in place," says Xavier Tytelman, an aviation safety specialist.
If, on the other hand, the pressure difference is less or non-existent, a passenger will have the strength to open the emergency exit. But the first security, automatic locking, must be lifted. It disarms when the differential between the air pressure inside and outside the aircraft is very low, such as when the aircraft "has had a taxiing speed or is in landing configuration," says Bertrand Vilmer. In the case of the incident in South Korea, the plane was three minutes away from landing.
