This should have been a two part movie
I think we should see what happens after the world learns what happened. It would especially be interesting to see what happens with Dean Cain's character.
shareThis should have been a 1/2 hour Sitcom for all the incorrect things that were portrayed. Would have been a good Seinfeld or Everybody Loves Raymond episode.
Bad enough to lose pressurization at 35,000 ft. let alone 65,000 ft.
1) At 65K ft., a sudden puncture de-pressurization would have sucked half the cabin out.
2) The pilots should have IMMEDIATELY been on cockpit masks BEFORE THEY DID ANYTHING!!! They wouldn't even TALK about what to do! They would have IMMEDIATELY entered rapid decent to at least 15K or lower.
3) Why did the oxygen masks in the cabin not work except for the wonderful little group in "The Conference Room"? As long as they were all without oxygen BEFORE the crew began a rapid decent, they would have been DEAD! Not unconscious, not "in a coma"...they would have been DEAD! DUH! This includes the two dogs, the dogs' daddy, the rude little blonde("The Phone Police" comment) in the Blue Room, the Flight Attendant, our Hero "The Weekend Pilot", and everyone else outside "The Conference Room"(Why them?)! The Flt. Engineer would have been dead BEFORE he got sucked out the hole for as long as he went crawling down the aisle without trying to find a mask!
4) Yep, USN would cover their butts, yet I still really like Dean Cain.
5) Yep, the insurance company would try to cut their losses, yet I still really like Gail O'Grady.
6) Yep, the company wouldn't want an SST crashing into Downtown SFO.
At least they got the last three things right.
"At 65K ft., a sudden puncture de-pressurization would have sucked half the cabin out."
Why do you know this? Because you saw it in another movie? Because it makes sense to you? You probably also buy the idea that a bullet hole will cause so much suction it can suck a person out the plane.
Do you watch Mythbusters? They blew away this whole explosive decompression myth. A hole as large as a window would only effect passengers immediately adjacent. It would not suck half the cabin out at all.
I think the whole concept of explosive decompression came from the sort of evidence we have from bombs being detonated on aircraft. You know how it produces a hole with all the metal forced outwards? I think that may be where some of the confusion lies.
In the book, those passengers that survive (without permenant brain damage that is, I think it said in the book that the children and the elderly died and those that survive where the stronger, younger set but even then they all were reduced to gibbering, savage mob of idiots that had trouble walking up stairs) after being trapped in the toilets. The doors 'seal shut' and trap a pocket of air inside, but even then most of them pass out from oxygen deprivation but it's not anyway near as severe as that for the other passengers. Sometimes I just wish they'd stick to the bloody book...
In the 1970s (please don't ask me what year), on a National Airlines DC-10 a fan blade punctured one of the windows and a man - who was about 5'4" and weighed about 120lbs) was sucked out of the window but ONLY because his seat belt wasn't fastened, and he was sitting right beside the window. The problem is that the air doesn't escape fast enough or with enough force to 'pull' things out because there isn't a vacuum outside (and even if there was, it probably wouldn't happen).
There's info about the National Incident at http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19731103-0. I even found a picture. The entire window was lost, so it was a pretty big hole. It did suck one person out, but clearly didn't suck out the entire aircraft interior. The plane was at 39000 feet.
I don't really buy the "surviving in the bathroom" idea. Most aircraft cruise with a pressure equivalent to 5,000 - 8,000 feet. At 7,000 that's a pressure of 11psi. At 39,000 feet/2.8psi, there's a pressure differential of over 8psi. For a 24 by 72 inch door, that's over 13,000 pounds of pressure (not to mention the other walls. I'm sure seams would give way pretty quickly.
I'd be surprised if those toilets are even sealed very tight. After all, they are ventilated with the rest of the plane. The air would just travel through the ductwork.
I've not read this book. The movie was clearly using the standard airline mythology. I get the impression the book may have relied of some fanciful ideas as well.
Because, Charles, my friend, I was a F/A for 16 years, a private pilot, and I understand Flight Physiology. I don't depend on movies or TV shows for a reality check either. What happens at 35K to 40K feet is litteraly doubled, tripled at 65K. It still would have caused a lot of gushing air and debris being sucked out, but they all would have had less than 30 seconds of usable oxygen before hypoxia set in rendering them all unconscious.
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