DEBUNKED: 10 Airplane Myths That People Still Believe

[wa3zrm]

Flying can be a mysterious experience: Planes are incredibly complicated, even scary machines, and pilots and flight attendants don't tell you too much about what's going on.
So it makes sense that people believe all sorts of interesting "facts" about air travel.
The problem is, a lot of them aren't true.
From "you get drunk faster in the air" to "the air in planes is riddled with germs," here are 10 airplane myths that needed to be debunked.
1. Opening a plane door while in flight is a real safety risk.
It isn't. When the plane is at cruising altitude, it's pressurized. That pressure means that getting a door open would require superhuman strength.
To quote Patrick Smith, an airline pilot, blogger, and author of Cockpit Confidential: "You cannot – repeat, cannot – open the doors or emergency hatches of an airplane in flight. You can’t open them for the simple reason that cabin pressure won’t allow it."
So don't worry about the occasional passenger going nuts and everyone flying out of the plane as the result of an opened door, it isn't going to happen. Which leads us to the next myth...

2. A small hole in a plane will lead to everyone being sucked right out.
Patrick Smith notes that while bombs and large-scale structural failures can cause disastrous, rapid decompression, a small hole in a plane's fuselage is a different matter.
After a foot-long breach in an Alaska Airlines MD-80 plane led to an emergency descent in 2006, Smith wrote in his Salon column: "The breach was a small one, and once the cabin pressure had escaped, it could be reasonably assumed that the plane was going to stay in one solid piece and fly just fine. Which it did."

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3. You get drunk faster at cruising altitude. 4. Planes dump human waste while in air.
5. You can get stuck on a plane toilet if you flush while sitting down.
6. Recirculated air in planes spreads disease.
7. Wearing your seat belt can hurt your chances of surviving a plane crash.
8. Pilots can control airflow to keep passengers sedated and save on fuel.
9. Oxygen masks are decoys, meant to keep passengers calm before a crash.
10. You have no chance of surviving a plane crash.

(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...

[Darwin]

Perhaps this should have been titled Airliner Myths. As far as all aircraft are concerned one of the most pernicious, and hardy, myths is that wings create lift by air traveling faster over the top curved surface of an airfoil thereby reducing the pressure so the plane goes up. Complete bollocks of course but I still see it quoted as gospel from time to time by some clueless ignorati of the fourth estate.

[Snusdog]

whew......I'm glad they didn't tell me that my whole plan of jumping up in the air right before the plane crashed wouldn't work..........it's my go to plan every time I fly

[Frankie Reloaded]

WHAT? Planes don´t dump human waste while in air?

Last time I used such toilet I clearly saw sleepers rushing down below.

Oh, wait. That was on a train.

[Snusdog]

Perhaps this should have been titled Airliner Myths. As far as all aircraft are concerned one of the most pernicious, and hardy, myths is that wings create lift by air traveling faster over the top curved surface of an airfoil thereby reducing the pressure so the plane goes up. Complete bollocks of course but I still see it quoted as gospel from time to time by some clueless ignorati of the fourth estate.

Right you are.....everyone knows its the strings tied to the top of the plane that hold it up......just watch some old grade "B" movies.....you can clearly see the strings

[lxskllr]

whew......I'm glad they didn't tell me that my whole plan of jumping up in the air right before the plane crashed wouldn't work..........it's my go to plan every time I fly

Life would be much more fun with cartoon physics.