Have you ever noticed that aircraft doors always have a frame around them?
When I'm traveling by plane and I'm about to get on, I'm never in too much of a hurry, because if everyone doesn't get on, there's no [...]
When I travel by plane and I'm about to get on, I never have too much hurry, Anyway, if they don't all go up, we won't go. I like that. linger a moment and observe it. The various antennas, flaps, portholes, hatches, wheels, cables, lettering, handles, engines, in short I observe a little bit of everything, including the tailgate with the giant handle used to seal the aircraft and the small red strip to put on the small window.
In this article:
Looking closely, we can see that the main doors and emergency exits always have a frame around that clearly highlights them, Have you ever wondered why?
Airplanes are an engineering concentrate of technology and nothing is left to chance, most of the decisions, even aesthetic ones, are made because of issues of security and one of them is the dark outline, if the plane is white, or light outline if the plane is dark, that you see around the doors for the exits.
Color is even regulated by the Federal Aviation Act:
"Each outer marking, including the fascia, must have a color contrast to be easily distinguishable from the surrounding surface of the fuselage. The contrast must be such that if the reflectance of the darker color is 15 percent or less, the reflectance of the lighter color must be at least 45 percent".
As we see in the image, the lower part is also more marked of the other parts, everything has a not-so-happy explanation to give. Basically the contrast makes the doors more easy by locate in case of accident aircraft, in such a way that they can be immediately detected by rescuers and be open in a timely manner.
The bottom edge is more pronounced to recognize whether the aircraft is straight o upside down, The top line at the tailgate, the "crooked" one, instead serves as the gutter: this is a metal strip designed to deflect water down and away from the door.
What happens if you open the tailgate in flight?
We have all wondered about this at least once in our lives, and we are always reminded of the scene in Family Guy where Peter opens the door of the airplane in flight:
But can it really be done? The answer is NO.
È impossible open the door while in the air for a very simple reason: the plane is pressurized and the pressure difference between inside and outside is so great that it is impossible for any person to get it open.
Of course, there have been reports of People who opened the tailgate in the airplane, But they were all cases where the plane was still in track ready to take off or just landed, when pressurization is not yet there, or had already been depressurized after landing.
Technically, if a depressurization on board, the hatch can also be opened in flight, but I doubt that anyone will get to open it: without the oxygen mask, in fact, they would pass out before reaching it due to lack of air!
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