Sucked Out of a Plane? Here's How It's Possible

Sucked out of a plane? How it is even possible?

It nearly happened Tuesday aboard a Southwest Airlines flight headed to Dallas, when a woman was partially sucked out of the plane after a rare engine explosion caused a window to burst, NBC News reported.

But how does one get "sucked out"?

Thomas Anthony, director of the University of Southern California’s aviation safety and security program, told The Verge it all has to do with conflicting pressure inside and outside of a plane, which creates a suction.

In order for passengers to breathe at a lower air pressure and higher altitude, planes are pressurized.

The problem is, if the aircraft were to be punctured, especially at higher altitudes when the pressure difference is larger, passengers could be pulled from the plane.

“So commercial aircraft are kept at a pressure altitude of about 8,000 feet so that people can comfortably breathe the air,” Anthony told The Verge. “When a hole is punctured, then there’s less pressure, there’s less oxygen, and that’s when the oxygen masks come down.”

He explained that, if the plane’s aluminum skin or composite skin were punctured, “the hole in the side of the airplane would be much greater, and, in a few cases, a person has been sucked out of the airplane.”

In Tuesday's incident, passengers were able to pull the woman back into the plane as it depressurized and quickly descended into Philadelphia International Airport. However, the woman later died.

There have been several other documented occasions in which passengers have been sucked out of the planes they were traveling in.

In 2003, reports emerged that 129 people were hurled out of a Russian cargo plane when it lost its door while flying over the Congo, The Associated Press reported.

In 1989, nine people were killed when the cargo door of United Airlines flight 811 blew off, causing extensive damage to the plane that resulted in its passengers being ejected from the flight and lost at sea.

In 1988, a flight attendant was swept out of an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 when part of the fuselage peeled off during flight from Hilo to Honolulu, The New York Times said.

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