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I had always been under the impression that the forces of air rushing out a broken window or hole in an airplane would be pretty limited and nothing near the levels necessary to carry a body through to the outside. The scene in Goldfinger has always been scoffed at by other pilots I have known.

However, recently I discovered that allegedly the pilot of an airliner was sucked out of a cockpit window in 1990 (re-enactment photo below):

enter image description here

Seems fishy to me. Is this for real? Can you really be sucked out of an aircraft window? Remind me to buckle up. Gives a whole new meaning to the word "deplaning".

Tyler Durden
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    That's like answering your own question. You can be sucked out of the plane because it is pressurized. – user13197 May 12 '16 at 18:16
  • Related: 5 Myths About Flying Everyone Believes --- and --- Can We Get Sucked Out of Airplanes? In case of explosive decompression, the main threat seems to be blocking air in lungs, albeit several accidents have led to people being sucked out. – mins May 12 '16 at 19:42
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    If the hole is big enough, why not? But better think of it as being blown out of the aircraft. That is what really happens. The most unrealistic part of the scene in "Goldfinger" is the duration of the incident - normally, a depressurisation is a very short but violent event. – Peter Kämpf May 12 '16 at 19:48
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    If the difference between the cabin pressure and the external pressure is say 8 psi (which is the right order of magnitude for cruising at 40,000 ft) it is simple arithmetic to show that is equivalent to a pressure of about half a ton per square foot. That's more than enough to move a human out of his/her seat! – alephzero May 12 '16 at 21:21
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    @alephzero: That's the pressure difference you'd experience if you were to wedge yourself into a man-shaped hole in the wall. Otherwise, the air would rapidly move around you, equalising the pressure on both sides of your body. Simple arithmetic gives an upper bound, but the forces acting on someone in his seat can be much smaller. – Marcks Thomas May 13 '16 at 12:25
  • @MarcksThomas Actually, if you got wedged in such a hole, you'd briefly experience much more pressure than that. – reirab May 13 '16 at 14:09
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    Big difference here, in that the hole that pilot is being sucked (blown) out through is the entire front windshield of the plane. In Goldfinger, the guy gets sucked out through a bullet-hole. I feel like the latter case is somewhat unlikely. In fact, the Mythbusters tried this in their first season and ruled it "busted". Not exactly 100% scientific proof, but worth a note at least. – Darrel Hoffman May 13 '16 at 15:29
  • @DarrelHoffman Yeah, you definitely can't be sucked out through a bullet hole (unless we define 'bullet' to include large artillery shells.) You could literally just cover it with something to fix the problem. It's likely that the bullet hole is smaller than the outflow valve anyway and the cabin pressure could be maintained by simply lowering the flow through the outflow valve even if you didn't close the hole. – reirab May 13 '16 at 18:12
  • @alephzero, adding to Marks comment: 1. The mass of the person plays a role against being moved. 2. It's not sufficient to move the body, some speed needs to be achieved to actually prevent him/her to just oppose the move created by the the pressure differential quickly decreasing. 3. It's likely the airflow will create vortexes within the cabin and the problem is more complex. Last: For the windshield, the (dynamic) pressure is larger outside of the aircraft than inside, your explanation doesn't work. – mins May 14 '16 at 09:13

2 Answers2

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Yes, it's real. Here's the official accident report on BA5390, which says:

The commander had been partially sucked out of his windscreen aperture

And:

The two men tried to pull the commander back within the aircraft [but] the effect of the slipstream frustrated their efforts

There's also Aloha 243 where one cabin crew member was ejected, although that was a really extreme case.

Pondlife
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At cruising altitude (say 35,000 feet), the difference in air pressure between the inside and outside of a comfortably pressurized aircraft is about 7 psi. If you imagine a hole just large enough for a person to squeeze through - perhaps 10 inches x 14 inches, that's 140 square inches; multiply that by 7 psi and you get 980 pounds of force - close to half a ton. If a hole that size suddenly opened up in an airplane, a lot of air would rush out very quickly and the pressure would quickly drop, but in the first few moments at least, there would surely be more than enough force to eject a person. For a small aircraft, a person would probably have to be right at the location that opened up to be "sucked out"; the pressure would fall off very rapidly with only a small volume available. For a large airliner like a 747, it could take some time for a significant amount of the air in the cabin to escape through such a hole, and there would be some pretty violent air movement near it, so an unsecured person could be ejected even from some distance away.

Two incidents (BA 5390 and Aloha 243) attest to the phenomenon, although the Aloha case was a more complex sequence of events. The investigation produced a theory that a cabin window blew out; the resulting depressurization effects caused a flight attendant to be blown into the aperture, momentarily obstructing the airflow; this produced a "fluid hammer" effect - an overpressure in excess of the structural limits of a corrosion-weakened airframe. This resulted in the "unzippering" of a large section of the upper fuselage. Despite the end result of the Aloha incident, it involved a person being effectively "sucked out" of a sudden opening in the cabin.

Anthony X
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