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."

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.

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: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 [kwc.org] 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.

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: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: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

[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