What happens if cabin pressure is loss

At a cabin pressure of 25, feet or more, there will be increasing mental difficulties as well as dizziness and lightheadedness, visual symptoms such as blurred or double vision, tingling in hands and feet, muscular weakness, lack of coordination and tremors.

This soon progresses to unresponsiveness and unconsciousness. Experimental studies have analyzed how long a person deprived of oxygen and affected by hypoxia is able to cope with an emergency situation.

At an altitude of 25, feet, a person can think clearly enough and act effectively for two minutes at moderate activity and three minutes sitting quietly. These windows of time drop to 45 and 75 seconds at 30, feet and only 18 and 30 seconds at 40, feet. If disaster strikes, always comply immediately with the instructions of the flight attendants. Using supplemental oxygen until the airplane descends to 10, feet and air pressure within the cabin returns to normal can truly save your life in an emergency.

Their column runs Mondays in Bay Area Living. You can write to them at P. Box , Pleasanton or send e-mails in care of living angnewspapers. Questions cannot be answered individually; however, some will be discussed in future columns.

Flight Today. History of Flight. Virtual Space. Like this article? Comment on this Story. Last Name. First Name. Address 1. Address 2. And it happens really fast. So if you maybe forgot to pressurize the plane and the level of oxygen is slowly dropping, it might be quite hard to tell when you or your co-pilot might be succumbing to hypoxia. Those effects? Basically, a group goes into a hypobaric chamber with oxygen masks on, then one person takes theirs off and is assigned basic tasks to show at what point they stop being able to think properly.

You can see it for yourself in this video:. The worst case scenario is something like what happened to Helio Airways flight from Cyprus to Athens in Flight crew members from the previous trip noted an issue with one of the door seals, and in order to fix the problem an engineer had to switch the pressurization system to manual.

He fixed the door, but forgot to switch the system back to auto, and flight crews then failed to correct it during three separate checks of the plane—and pilots managed to misidentify the literal warning signs multiple times.

Eventually, they radioed to ask for help with the equipment cooling system and the very engineer who had flipped the switch to manual asked the pilots to confirm that the pressurization system was set to auto.

Unfortunately, the pilots were already in the early stages of hypoxia and kept talking about the cooling system, not understanding what was happening. Almost everyone onboard eventually lost consciousness and the plane continued on autopilot to Athens, where it entered a holding pattern.

Not long after, the engines blew as they ran out of fuel and the plane crashed into hills outside Athens, killing everyone on board. Most of the time, though, decompression is survivable. One Southwest Airlines flight got a inch hole in the fuselage while flying at 34, feet and absolutely no one died.