This means that while you're airborne there's a giant different between the pressure inside the cabin of a plane and that outside of the plane - and all the air inside the plane desperately wants to get outside to fix the imbalance. When you get in an airplane and climb all the way up to a cruising altitude of 10,679 metres (35,000 feet), this pressure drops down to a mere 0.2 kilogram per square centimetre (3.4 pounds per square inch). This is what we're used to feeling and breathing. According to the American Vacuum Society, you experience roughly 1.0 kilogram per square centimetre (14.6 pounds per square inch) of pressure at sea level. It's kind of hard to imagine this shift in pressure ( unless you're a mountain climber), but using numbers seems to make it a bit easier. By doing so, you can survive the trip without passing out or suffering from hypoxia - a condition with fatal complications that arises from a lack of oxygen.īut, as you reach higher and higher elevations in your comfortably pressurised cabin, the air outside the plane becomes thinner, containing less oxygen and pressure. To make you a happy little traveller, the cabin of an airplane creates pressure by pumping in conditioned air that mimics the air pressure you're used to feeling on the ground.
#Airplane window movie#
If everything is working properly, you shouldn't even notice the pressure dropping outside your window as you sit there watching a movie or catching up on your social media feed (if you're lucky enough to have Wi-Fi).
#Airplane window windows#
While both the outer and middle panes have the power to resist the pressure from outside the plane, the brunt of the work falls on the outer window because it's the final barrier between you and the clouds.īefore we go into how these windows work, though, it's important to understand a bit about how air pressure changes when you're flying. The middle pane is the one with the bleed hole, and the whole system is completed by the outer pane - the most important one, since it protects you from the pressure difference outside. The first of these panes – the one you can touch and dirty up with fingerprints – is called a scratch pane. So why, you might be wondering, is there a scary-looking small hole in every airplane window? Well, in short, despite what it seems, it's there for your safety.Īccording to Mark Vanhoenacker, a British Airways pilot who reports about aviation for Slate, these tiny window holes are actually called 'bleed holes', and they're wedged between two other panes of acrylic material, meaning that when you look through an airplane window, you're actually peering through three different panes. It also stands to reason that – to keep that pressure contained – the cabin can't have any holes in it.
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