
Opening a plane door mid-flight - happy-go-lucky
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/item/a69fdc7e-7fb5-43ce-977f-1e88de99e0dc
======
plg
So it can only really happen at low altitudes, and at low altitudes, planes
are designed so that an open door is not catastrophic.

I don't know about you but I actually find this story reassuring, despite the
sensationalism.

tldr: if someone is about to open the cabin door mid flight, and it's actually
going to open, buckle up your seat belt and you will be fine.

~~~
zaxomi
If the door is opened when armed, the evacuation slide will be inflated. When
it breaks off the aircraft it can be sucked into the engine or damage the
tail.

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11thEarlOfMar
I am much more interested in what was going on with this guy. Appears to be a
psychotic episode, and if so, brought on by what?

In high school, PCP was a thing and would generate stories such as taking a
wine bottle to the head without effect. Maybe it's just morbid curiosity, but
I fly a lot and am as concerned about mentally ill passengers as I am anything
else...

If he had a tendency to behave this way, or a serious mental illness, was
there any way to know before he boarded a plane? Did he take a prescription
med and have an unexpected side effect? Or was it illicit combined with
profoundly bad judgement?

Or did he just have a really bad day and decide to end it and take a plane
load of souls with him?

Hoping there is follow up on this story with an explanation.

~~~
rdl
A lot of the "crazy drug strength" stories today seem to be attributed to
"bath salts", "spice", and other legal hacks (chemicals which weren't illegal
to trade, provided not for human consumption, to get around prohibition of far
more well studied drugs.)

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rdl
What is hard for me to believe is that other passengers didn't immediately
respond to the conflict. Post 9/11 I assumed US passengers would use if
anything too much force to respond to threats against the aircraft. While
stuff like the UA fight club is happening too, once the aircraft is flying and
something looks like it would either bring down the aircraft or cause a shoot
down of the aircraft, a reasonable person would act to end a threat.

~~~
lobster_johnson
Multiple passengers did involve themselves, and got hurt in the process.

News articles don't say (it's not an important detail), but we may speculate
that there were people on the sidelines who were waiting for an opportunity to
enter the fray.

But also, everyone involved seemed to be continually surprised about how
difficult it was to get the guy under control. Personally I'm not sure that,
if I were on that flight, I would've bothered if I saw that three or four
people were already engaging. The bystander effect (aka "someone else's
problem") isn't always completely illogical.

It probably happened quite fast, too. As I understand it, happened in an area
between bulkheads where there aren't any seats. The fight likely wasn't
visible to everyone on board, and by the time enough people rose to engage, it
might have been over. Again, just speculation.

Lastly, there's also obviously a limit to the number of people who can engage
in a fight in cramped airplane cabin.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
> an opportunity to enter the fray.

I'm a fairly large guy, and prone to have jumped in the middle of this. I can
only imagine how difficult it would have been to navigate the cramped seats
and isles, where surely everyone was gawking and rubbernecking, just to get to
the galley, where 2 small people have a hard time standing side-by-side, and
help in the fight. Two people tussling in that space is about all it's going
to allow, and the troublemaker was clearly on something I ain't on, to take a
beating with a wine bottle, and keep fighting. There's just no good answer
here, except for the pilot to ask, over the intercom, if there's a Jackie Chan
on board.

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bboreham
Why do they suggest the plane was at a low altitude? It was an hour into a
flight from Seattle to Beijing; by that time they will be cruising above
30,000 feet.

~~~
darklajid
Where did they suggest that?

I read it as "If still at low altitude, the door actually would open". In
othrr words, because they were at a high altitude, the door didn't open and
everything turned out alright.

~~~
bboreham
"at a lower altitude, and with the door being disarmed as it was"

The second of these two clauses refers to what actually happened; the first is
counterfactual. But since they didn't put the facts about altitude in TFA the
impression is that both are true.

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chiph
If the door had been opened by this lunatic and the slide then deployed
(flight attendants normally disarm it when you taxi up to the terminal), my
main concern is that it'd get torn off and be sucked into an engine. That'd
turn a bad situation into a very serious one.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
Jet engines can "eat" a lot of stuff before failing, and exploding, like in
the movies. They're 3,000 degree incinerators with giant 30,000 RPM food
processors in front and back. I'd be more worried about the slide wrapping
over the wing, and fouling the control surfaces. Surely plane engineers have
thought through this scenario though, and have some mitigation strategies in
the design?

~~~
greenyoda
Flight 1549, which famously landed on the Hudson River in 2009, had its
engines disabled by ingesting a few geese:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549)

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
Define "few" and I'll define "a lot". ;-)

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weberc2
I'm curious about the motive. Was this guy just angry or mentally ill?

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Flammy
The local article from the day of the event makes it pretty clear he was
having some sort of mental breakdown. This BBC article has a lot more generic
details about opening a plane door but the local article has a few more
details about the incident:

[http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/florida-
man-c...](http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/florida-man-charged-
with-interfering-with-crew-on-seattle-to-beijing-flight/)

> Hudek, who was sitting in first class and traveling on a “dependent pass,”
> ordered one beer before takeoff and showed no signs of intoxication, FBI
> Special Agent Caryn Highley wrote in the complaint.

> About an hour into the flight, Hudek briefly went into the lavatory,
> according to the complaint. He then went back out and asked one of the
> flight attendants a question in the galley area, the complaint says.

> Hudek returned to the lavatory for about two minutes. After he walked out he
> lunged toward the emergency exit door, grabbed the handle and tried to open
> it, the complaint alleges.

~~~
soccerdave
Assuming that this was a mental breakdown, what can we as a society do to help
these people or prevent this from happening? I imagine that the consequences
for this will be quite severe, and I also imagine that many people know
someone that could have had a mental breakdown like this and done something
like this.

~~~
DanBC
> and I also imagine that many people know someone that could have had a
> mental breakdown like this and done something like this.

This kind of dramatic event is very rare. You could focus some attention on
early intervention services that work with people experiencing first episode
of psychosis. Ideally those services would be all age, but pragmatically I
guess 14 to 35 would cover most people.

About 1% to 2% of the population has a psychotic illness. I think that
prevalence, with the rarity of events like this is reassuring.

You're far more likely to come to harm on a plane from a drunk or drugged
person, or from someone dropping their bag on your head as they get something
from the overhead locker.

And this risk from drunk / drugged people shows perhaps another thing to
target: phobias are very treatable. People don't know this, and can't afford
the treatment, so they self-medicate with alcohol and meds and drugs.

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london888
Headline is a bit misleading. Was hoping for a photo of chaos.

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yborg
I am somewhat disappointed that the BBC has to resort to clickbait titles now.
At no point is the aircraft door actually opened, the title is completely
false.

~~~
weberc2
To be fair, they do describe what happens when a door is opened.

~~~
jaclaz
Yep, but the generic point on quality of current BBC stands nonetheless.

IF I hadn't just read this sentence on this article:

>Nevertheless, things wouldn’t have been quite so dramatic as in Iron Man 3,
where all the passengers get sucked out of a hole blown in an aircraft.

I would have never believed possible that it came from BBC, as well as - since
one or more bottles of wine were involved in the incident - the presence of a
stock photo of two bottles of wine (unopened/completely full) and a half full
glass, resting on a wooden crate is something that would be maybe appropriate
to a wine related blog.

~~~
london888
This is the BBC 3 part of the site rather than BBC News, so it's meant for a
younger audience.

~~~
jaclaz
>This is the BBC 3 part of the site rather than BBC News, so it's meant for a
younger audience.

Maybe, but I still don't understand why the younger should be fed with crappy
"dramatization".

And younger as they might be they should know how a bottle of wine is made and
need not an illustration of it (that continues making little sense).

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BigChiefSmokem
I don't get it, so why can't they just put a $2 bolt lock on the release
mechanism (the big handle thing) while in-flight and call it a day? What am I
missing here?

~~~
tass
Because the door needs to be opened in an emergency, and being locked would
prevent that.

~~~
ccozan
And also is meant to be opened be _everyone_, so the mechanism has to be very
simple too.

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jjuhl
The guy wants to get off. I say "let him get off". Don't hand him a parachute
and close the door (or land) after he departs.

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CydeWeys
Pro-tip: The best weapon you have available in such a situation is repeated
full-armed swings to the head with a laptop, aimed in such a way to impact
using the corner of the laptop instead of the flat. That's the most effective
weapon you're likely to have with you on an airplane. Someone is _not_ going
to be able to shrug that off like they will a wine bottle being broken over
their head (which, in breaking, dissipates most of its energy).

~~~
ccozan
I don't think that is a good pro-tip. Have you noticed lately that laptops are
becoming smaller and lighter? I can't imagine an X1 Carbon doing anything to a
skull...And hitting with the corner may be life dangerous, after all you don't
want to kill the person, but incapacitate it.

No, the pro-tip would be ... box the hell of the guy. Your fist/knee is a very
reliable weapon.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
Using a weapon (any kind of, starting with a rolled magazine up to a laptop)
is a much better solution.

You are likely to break your hand if you try to boxe someone out of the blue,
especially if you hit the skull.

Kicking is a better option if there are no weapons.

The melee option is not bad either in the configuration they had (not much
space to show off martial arts skills learned in a J Chan movie) - with a few
people on him he is not likely to be able to move.

Source : 14 years of self - defence, had to use my skills only once, ran away
twice.

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tyingq
The repeated use of the word "stewardess" in the article is somewhat
interesting.

~~~
xienze
Not really. That's the word for a female steward. It lets the reader know they
were females. Yeah yeah patriarchy, why are gendered words even a thing in
2017, let me save you the trouble.

~~~
tyingq
Flight attendants have pushed pretty hard to get rid of the term over a long
time period, and have been pretty successful with it. For reasons beyond
gender.

~~~
tgb
Google ngrams shows not a single occurrence of "flight attendant" in their
British English corpus.
[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Flight+attenda...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Flight+attendant%2Cstewardess%2Cattendant%2Csteward&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=6&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cstewardess%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cattendant%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Csteward%3B%2Cc0)

~~~
vertex-four
Err, yes it does? ngrams is case-sensitive by default.

~~~
tgb
Good catch, that's what I get for working on a phone.

