First place to look when this sort of thing happens is pprune.org - lots of pilots on there, often with specific knowledge of the aircraft type and/or of the incident itself.
> A report in a Hungarian publication claims, "A passenger was sucked into the window by the change in air pressure, with the 61-year-old man's head sticking out of the plane. Witnesses say his wife grabbed him, which was the reason he wasn't pulled out of the plane by the lower air pressure outside." [translation by Google]
Well, this isn’t very typical, I’d like to make that point.
Look, the windows not supposed to fall off, for a start. These things are built to rigorous aeronautical engineering standards — cardboard’s out, cardboard derivatives, no cellotape, no string. So chance in a million, really.
And to be clear, the plane that the window fell off was flown to safety. So there’s nothing out there but birds, air, wind and clouds… and the window that fell off.
Well there are a lot of these airplanes going around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen. I just don’t want people thinking that airplanes aren’t safe.
Fan and turbine failures are supposed to be contained by the engine casing - it's part of certification. But as we see here, uncontained failures do occur. In general "airplane builders" do the absolute minimum to meet certification so they're not going to add reinforcement to protect against such an event until they're forced Into doing so by the authorities.
Turboprops can't, of course, contain a propellor failure which is why they have a big slab of armour in line with the prop disk. So in that case, yes, safety wins over cost and weight.
The comment you are replying to is a reference to a famous comedy skit (about the whole front of an oceanliner falling off, and the official company response).
Extremely similar to Southwest flight 1380 which killed a person in the US after they were partially sucked out of a broken window from an engine failure.
Hopefully someone can give a more informed comment. For me, it's the seats directly in-line with the first turbine, and a few seats back.
edit: Well, I hope we are beyond boohoo LLM based info now. Here is Fable 5 High's explanation, and I loosely verified it. I post this to save many watts of energy due to others asking the same thing.
Simplified:
> I'd like to avoid seats in the rotor burst zone: the rows roughly in line with the plane of the engine's fan and turbine disks, plus a few rows fore and aft of that.
More details:
> The term you're looking for is the rotor burst zone — sometimes called the uncontained engine rotor failure (UERF) debris zone. That's the phrase an aerospace engineer or pilot would immediately recognize.
> Here's the physics behind it: the fan, compressor, and turbine disks in a jet engine spin at enormous speeds (turbine disks can exceed 10,000 RPM). If a disk or blade lets go and the containment case can't hold it, the fragments fly out tangentially — meaning they travel in the plane of rotation of that disk, perpendicular to the engine's axis. They don't spray forward or backward much; they carve out a relatively narrow band.
> FAA guidance (Advisory Circular 20-128A, which designers use to minimize hazards from these events) models the debris path as the plane of each rotor stage plus roughly ±15 degrees fore and aft of it. Since an engine has multiple rotor stages spread along its length, the combined hazard band along the fuselage is a few rows wide, centered roughly abeam the engines.
"Low probability very high consequence situation has never happened to me, therefore I needn't do anything." -- someone who doesn't understand expectation in probability.
From https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk65knkyzdo
Media reports in Greece and Germany quoted passengers describing a loud bang followed by the window breaking and oxygen masks falling from the ceiling shortly after the Boeing 737 had taken off.
They believe the window was smashed by pieces of the jet's engine - although Ryanair has not commented on this.
Would it be strange to not have any windows on a plane? You could put thin oled panels on the wall instead. Seems like that would be more structurally sound.
I suspect you'd lose the sense of depth that helps make the plane feel less small. There's also a safety factor for situational awareness; many carriers require shades to be open for the cabin crew to figure out the safest side to evacuate on in an emergency.
You could do something with mirrors, but the safety cards reference looking out the windows before opening the emergency doors, so I bet you need at least SOME.
I could see this being a safety issue if there’s a problem with the wing or engine and the panels fail, so zero visibility. Its why they ask you to open the window blinds during take off and landing
That’s built into ios now too. It helps me not get car sick so quickly when I use my phone for a minute or two at a time, but I still can’t do what I want to do, which is read in the car.
I thought that the speed of the air moving outside of the plane had a bigger impact on the pressure imbalance that causes someone to be "sucked out" of plane. It appears that is a false belief, the inside/outside pressure difference is from the artificial pressurization of the internal cabin. I blame a high school physics teacher for the memorable "why does a soft top convertible poof out when driving fast?" question as a preamble to explaining bernoulli for my false assumption.
I learned about the artificial pressurization not too long ago. But until I read your comment, I assumed that in a case like that, the inside and outside pressures would balance shortly and the sucking would cease. Now it occurred to me that maybe the pressurization system will continue to try to compensate pressure in a situation where pressure can´t be stabilized due to a broken window, which would cause the sucking to go on. Not sure if that would be the case. Anyone knows what happens?
Ryanair has only ever lost a plane once, due to a bird strike with only some injuries, and they are one of biggest airlines by number of flights (if not the biggest).
Turns out plane accidents are expensive, and the reputation loss as well. Don't even need to lose the plane, just the plane being stuck on the ground is expensive (they are also one of the most timely airlines because of this). Really can not afford to have accidents!
First place to look when this sort of thing happens is pprune.org - lots of pilots on there, often with specific knowledge of the aircraft type and/or of the incident itself.
In this case: https://www.pprune.org/accidents-close-calls/672872-ryanair-...
That top reply made me laugh out loud:
“>Glad it turned out well.
>Wonder what the Ryanair social media team is going to do with this one
Ryanair introducing new additional charge to have a window.”
> A report in a Hungarian publication claims, "A passenger was sucked into the window by the change in air pressure, with the 61-year-old man's head sticking out of the plane. Witnesses say his wife grabbed him, which was the reason he wasn't pulled out of the plane by the lower air pressure outside." [translation by Google]
Points for the wife!
(from https://www.pprune.org/accidents-close-calls/672872-ryanair-...)
Well, this isn’t very typical, I’d like to make that point.
Look, the windows not supposed to fall off, for a start. These things are built to rigorous aeronautical engineering standards — cardboard’s out, cardboard derivatives, no cellotape, no string. So chance in a million, really.
And to be clear, the plane that the window fell off was flown to safety. So there’s nothing out there but birds, air, wind and clouds… and the window that fell off.
The (hilarious) reference: https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM
The window didn't "fall off". In article's 1st paragraph:
"debris from a dramatic engine failure caused damage to the aircraft's window"
That's high-velocity pieces of metal. Hard to prevent that from shattering a window if engine housing didn't catch it.
How much stronger, thicker & heavier you want to make those windows? Costing how much more fuel? To save how many lives per year?
I'd think airplane builders (note: not airlines!) are more qualified to make that calculation than armchair safety 'experts'.
Well there are a lot of these airplanes going around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen. I just don’t want people thinking that airplanes aren’t safe.
Fan and turbine failures are supposed to be contained by the engine casing - it's part of certification. But as we see here, uncontained failures do occur. In general "airplane builders" do the absolute minimum to meet certification so they're not going to add reinforcement to protect against such an event until they're forced Into doing so by the authorities.
Turboprops can't, of course, contain a propellor failure which is why they have a big slab of armour in line with the prop disk. So in that case, yes, safety wins over cost and weight.
The comment you are replying to is a reference to a famous comedy skit (about the whole front of an oceanliner falling off, and the official company response).
whoosh..
I just want to make the point that this is not normal
The plane was towed outside the atmosphere.
Extremely similar to Southwest flight 1380 which killed a person in the US after they were partially sucked out of a broken window from an engine failure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380
This would all be solved if the engines were out in front of the plane like podracers.
And both were Boeing 737s ... (albeit different variants)
Lesson learned for Ryanair leadership: charge more for seats not in range of debris from uncontained turbine failures.
Seriously though, as an aviation geek, I always avoid those seats when given a choice.
Seats near the engine are loud, so two birds, one stone.
Serious question: Which seats are the ones that are in range? Just in front of the wing, or just behind it?
Hopefully someone can give a more informed comment. For me, it's the seats directly in-line with the first turbine, and a few seats back.
edit: Well, I hope we are beyond boohoo LLM based info now. Here is Fable 5 High's explanation, and I loosely verified it. I post this to save many watts of energy due to others asking the same thing.
Simplified:
> I'd like to avoid seats in the rotor burst zone: the rows roughly in line with the plane of the engine's fan and turbine disks, plus a few rows fore and aft of that.
More details:
> The term you're looking for is the rotor burst zone — sometimes called the uncontained engine rotor failure (UERF) debris zone. That's the phrase an aerospace engineer or pilot would immediately recognize.
> Here's the physics behind it: the fan, compressor, and turbine disks in a jet engine spin at enormous speeds (turbine disks can exceed 10,000 RPM). If a disk or blade lets go and the containment case can't hold it, the fragments fly out tangentially — meaning they travel in the plane of rotation of that disk, perpendicular to the engine's axis. They don't spray forward or backward much; they carve out a relatively narrow band.
> FAA guidance (Advisory Circular 20-128A, which designers use to minimize hazards from these events) models the debris path as the plane of each rotor stage plus roughly ±15 degrees fore and aft of it. Since an engine has multiple rotor stages spread along its length, the combined hazard band along the fuselage is a few rows wide, centered roughly abeam the engines.
Child comment if anyone would care to explain which info in the parent comment is incorrect.
Good photo of the broken window in Aviation Herald: https://avherald.com/h?article=53ba2a01&opt=0
More discussion in: Airliners.net: https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1510797&...
That photo ws in the main article as well.
This is one reason to always be wearing your seat belt tightly when flying.
Because its a Ryanair flight?
Ryanair has a pretty high safety record, they fly modern, well maintained planes because their margins are lower and they make them up in volume.
Fun fact: Ryanair owns its fleet outright, and (currently) buys all of its new planes from cash flow. Pretty unusual for a major airline.
:)
Common, it never happened to me. /s
"Low probability very high consequence situation has never happened to me, therefore I needn't do anything." -- someone who doesn't understand expectation in probability.
They even put a "/s" at the end of their comment...
I wasn't referring to them directly, so I have plausible deniability.
I wonder if Ryanair is going to charge them for being oversized to fit through their designated window.
Window seat: €12.99
They will start charging extra for getting to not sit by a window.
The entire row is at risk:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Air_Lines_Flight_1288
Window: €12.99 extra.
From https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk65knkyzdo Media reports in Greece and Germany quoted passengers describing a loud bang followed by the window breaking and oxygen masks falling from the ceiling shortly after the Boeing 737 had taken off.
They believe the window was smashed by pieces of the jet's engine - although Ryanair has not commented on this.
Would it be strange to not have any windows on a plane? You could put thin oled panels on the wall instead. Seems like that would be more structurally sound.
I suspect you'd lose the sense of depth that helps make the plane feel less small. There's also a safety factor for situational awareness; many carriers require shades to be open for the cabin crew to figure out the safest side to evacuate on in an emergency.
You could do something with mirrors, but the safety cards reference looking out the windows before opening the emergency doors, so I bet you need at least SOME.
I could see this being a safety issue if there’s a problem with the wing or engine and the panels fail, so zero visibility. Its why they ask you to open the window blinds during take off and landing
It's also so that rescue personnel can see into the plane in the event it crashes.
Odd. Rescue personnel aren't typically high enough to see in through the windows.
I like to be able to look out the window, especially when we hit rough air. Seeing the fixed external reference helps me, for whatever reason.
Presumably for the same reason looking out the windshield helps with car sickness.
There are apps that show an overlay of moving dots on your phone which help with motion sickness.
E.g. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.stormtech....
That’s built into ios now too. It helps me not get car sick so quickly when I use my phone for a minute or two at a time, but I still can’t do what I want to do, which is read in the car.
On a Boeing? No way!
R.Y.A.N.A.I.R. — Remove Yourself And Never Ask If Refunded
£5 and we’ll drop you off at home before we land! Save the trip back from the airport.
He was pushed, not sucked. Pressure never sucks.
Counterpoint: peer pressure.
Checkmate, science!
edit: Never mind me. I think I was wrong about this.
Colloquially speaking, it sucks. It’s like saying vacuum cleaners technically blow. It might be true but everybody knows it as sucking.
Boeing 737
I thought that the speed of the air moving outside of the plane had a bigger impact on the pressure imbalance that causes someone to be "sucked out" of plane. It appears that is a false belief, the inside/outside pressure difference is from the artificial pressurization of the internal cabin. I blame a high school physics teacher for the memorable "why does a soft top convertible poof out when driving fast?" question as a preamble to explaining bernoulli for my false assumption.
I learned about the artificial pressurization not too long ago. But until I read your comment, I assumed that in a case like that, the inside and outside pressures would balance shortly and the sucking would cease. Now it occurred to me that maybe the pressurization system will continue to try to compensate pressure in a situation where pressure can´t be stabilized due to a broken window, which would cause the sucking to go on. Not sure if that would be the case. Anyone knows what happens?
SUCTION
[flagged]
[dead]
[flagged]
Ryanair has only ever lost a plane once, due to a bird strike with only some injuries, and they are one of biggest airlines by number of flights (if not the biggest).
Turns out plane accidents are expensive, and the reputation loss as well. Don't even need to lose the plane, just the plane being stuck on the ground is expensive (they are also one of the most timely airlines because of this). Really can not afford to have accidents!
Cheap, safe, fast. You can have any 2 out of the 3.