Items (and human beings) could be sucked outside the aircraft as happened on the Aloha Airlines B-737 in 1988. Dust and debris will be picked up and rush toward the opening where the pressurized air is rushing out. This may be preceded by a loud popping sound. It is accompanied by a good deal of noise as the higher pressure air in the cabin rushes out until the pressure equalizes with the external ambient pressure. This is one of the reasons we fly in pressurized airplane cabins.Ī sudden failure of a pressurized cabin is generally very dangerous but immediately recognizable. At a certain point we get oxygen starvation, or hypoxia. The higher we climb into the atmosphere surrounding Earth, the lower is the partial pressure of oxygen in the alveoli. the pressure of the oxygen component of the gas mixture) is 14% (160 mmHg) when the air we breathe is at the usual 1 atmosphere (760 mmHg), at sea-level. Usually the partial pressure of oxygen in the alveoli (i.e. The oxygen from air passes into our bloodstream through small sacs in our lungs called alveoli. Hypoxia is a phenomenon that receives a lot of attention in aerospace medicine. Too much and anything can become flammable, too little and you get deadly hypoxia resulting in impaired judgment at the precise time it is most needed.Ĭlick to see the physiological effects of hypoxia (Credits: Mayo Clinic). In the operation of aerospace and other systems, oxygen is a friend or an enemy depending on quantity. Should inspections reveal cases of cracks, in particular on B-777 variants structurally identical to that of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, the slow decompression hypothesis would appear to be an increasingly likely explanation.
#Helios airways flight 522 incident. crack
For the latter case it should be noted that following the discovery of a 40 cm crack on a B-777 on 6 March, just two days before Flight MH370’s disappearance, the FAA issued an Airworthiness Directive requiring inspection of B-777 fuselages for cracks at an antenna location that they said could lead to decompression. The slow decompression could be due to an operational error, as was the case for Helios Flight 522, or because of structural failure. The apparent erratic conduct of flight MH370 and the disabling of some communication equipment could be explained either by impaired pilot judgment typical of hypoxia (oxygen starvation) triggered by a slow cabin decompression, or because of the intervention of someone onboard with limited flight piloting experience who may have tried to replace the hypoxia incapacitated crew. After its last communication Flight MH370 is thought to have crossed back over the peninsula (Credits: Wikimedia user Sailsbystars).
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