Here’s a list of 8 aviation movie myths, debunked.
1. An airplane is full of secret crawl spaces
The truth is, on board real estate is at a premium. Effectively every centimeter of space that can be spared is used with the exception of the passenger cabin . Maintenance staff know very well how tight their access spaces to on board systems are, and where some larger aircraft will have the odd panel that, with the right screwdriver, will let you move from the passenger cabin to the cargo hold, you’ll first need to move a few seats aside and roll back the carpet. Trust me, it’s no maze of mystery.
2. Lose an engine and it’s all over
Even single-engine aircraft can easily survive losing an engine; There are examples of planes losing their only engine and gliding in safely for a powerless landing. As for aircraft with two or more engines? Well that’s why they’ve got two or more engines! Aircraft are designed so that even during take-off, if an engine fails at the critical point where they can’t stop safely on the runway anymore, they can still take-off, climb out, fly around, land, and even abandon the approach and climb back out (go-around). It’s called n-1 (n = number of engines) in the biz, and it’s something each pilot trains multiple times a year in the simulator.
3. Turbulence?
The cabin lights will flash dramatically, the oxygen masks will drop!
The truth is turbulence is a natural consequence of flying. The earth’s atmosphere is rarely perfectly smooth, and turbulence is the result of these millions of tiny variations in air speed, direction, and density; Think of it as the ‘road’ the plane’s ‘driving’ on. Because it’s such a natural thing, aircraft manufacturers make sure they test new airplanes in the worst possible conditions. Every airplane’s wings are tested to withstand 150% of the maximum stress they will ever encounter, including turbulence. Even the on board systems, including the lights, are built to take a good beating. As for the oxygen masks, they’re equally secure in their little boxes, and will only come down either when the pilots presses a button in the cockpit, the cabin pressure drops suddenly, or if you have an exceptionally hard landing that jolts the automatic cabin pressure trigger. Turbulence could never generate enough force to pop those compartments open.
4. A hole in the side of the plane will suck everyone out
It’s true that the air pressure outside at cruising altitude is lower inside the aircraft, but it’s not enough to go full vacuum cleaner the moment you pop a hole in the side of the plane. Initially there will be a rush of air, enough to blow loose papers and items of clothing around. About one second later, the pressure inside and outside equalizes, and you’re just left with air rushing past the hole in the fuselage. It will be noisy, it will be cold (thermodynamics, lower air pressures create lower temperatures), and your oxygen mask will drop, but it won’t be those images of baddies being sucked into oblivion as 007 grips onto the gold-frilled curtains for dear life.
5. The airplane doors can be opened in flight
Maybe back in 1932, yes, when aircraft weren’t pressurized either. Modern aircraft are pressurized, and are designed to use this to their advantage; all airplane doors, including the over-wing exit hatches, are designed like plugs. They all open by somehow sliding or rotating inwards into the cabin before opening outwards through the door-frame. This works because both the door and fuselage are curved. Flush against this frame, the door is stuck into the curved shape like a plug. Put it at any other angle, and it barely slips through the curved door-frame of the fuselage. Since the doors and hatches have to be pulled inwards to be opened, this also means that in flight the pressure differential pushes the door or hatch shut against the seals in the frame. If you want to open it, you’ll be pulling against an impossibly huge amount of force (for those math nerds, it’s about 7.8 psi, or 5.490kg/m2. Calculate that by the surface area of the door, and you’ll see that the door isn’t moving).
6. Aviation fuel can always explode into flames
The truth is aviation fuel is actually designed to be quite flame resistant as a liquid. They use “Jet A-1”, kerosene with additives to make it resistant to freezing or evaporation within a large temperature range (in the order of -50c to +70c), and you could extinguish a lit match in a glass of the stuff. The story becomes very different however, if you spray it, as this creates an ideal mixture ratio with the oxygen in the air for it to burn. Jet engines are designed to do this with complex nozzles and fuel/air ‘swirlers’ in their combustion sections.
7. Lightning will blow up a plane
Lightning actually hits aircraft far more often than you’d know. On average, every aircraft will experience one lightning strike a year, that’s more than 50 strikes a day, worldwide. And whilst it can be a frightening experience for passengers, the reality is not much happens. It was a different story back in 1962. Since then all aircraft have been designed to deal with lightning properly. Lighting won’t create a spark in the fuel tank or overload on board electrical systems. And on top of this, when lightning does strike, pretty much all of the charge stays on the outside of the airframe anyway. Airplanes are designed as a metallic “Faraday” cage covered with a skin, which conducts electricity around the outside of the cabin, cargo compartments, and fuel tanks. When you see a YouTube videos of lightning strikes, you’ll see the bolt enters one part of the plane, and leaves by another. The plane becomes part of the lightning bolts route to the ground.
8. Losing the autopilot will cause the aircraft to crash
The reality is every aircraft is designed with several levels of redundancy in every system, and the autopilot is no exception. All medium to large commercial passenger aircraft have two, sometimes three, separate autopilot computers, each of which can fly the airplane on their own. And even if that fails, pilot’s are trained to fly a plane, not just control the autopilot.
That’s Hollywood debunked for you.
Hope it doesn’t ruin too many movie moments for you.
So the next time you have the bad luck to get stuck in turbulence, spare a thought for the other person staring intently at the lights, waiting for the masks to drop, and praying a lightning bolt doesn’t blast a hole in the side and suck everyone out into oblivion.
Reformatted to conform with our website theme by staff member.
Categories Aviation Tags myths
