Uncontrolled decompression
[4] The risk of lung trauma is very high, as is the danger from any unsecured objects that can become projectiles because of the explosive force, which may be likened to a bomb detonation.
Immediately after an explosive decompression, a heavy fog may fill the aircraft cabin as the air cools, raising the relative humidity and causing sudden condensation.
[16] The second incident occurred on April 17, 2018, when a woman on Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 was partially blown through an airplane passenger window that had broken from a similar engine failure.
[20] Modern aircraft are specifically designed with longitudinal and circumferential reinforcing ribs in order to prevent localised damage from tearing the whole fuselage open during a decompression incident.
The FAA issued an Airworthiness Directive the following year requiring manufacturers of wide-body aircraft to strengthen floors so that they could withstand the effects of in-flight decompression caused by an opening of up to 20 square feet (1.9 m2) in the lower deck cargo compartment.
[22] Manufacturers were able to comply with the Directive either by strengthening the floors and/or installing relief vents called "dado panels" between the passenger cabin and the cargo compartment.
Pressurization prevented the doors of Saudia Flight 163 from being opened on the ground after the aircraft made a successful emergency landing, resulting in the deaths of all 287 passengers and 14 crew members from fire and smoke.
Prior to 1996, approximately 6,000 large commercial transport airplanes were type certified to fly up to 45,000 feet (14,000 m), without being required to meet special conditions related to flight at high altitude.
[27] The Depressurization Exposure Integral (DEI) is a quantitative model that is used by the FAA to enforce compliance with decompression-related design directives.
The model relies on the fact that the pressure that the subject is exposed to and the duration of that exposure are the two most important variables at play in a decompression event.
[8] One notable, recent case was Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 in 2018, where an uncontained engine failure ruptured a window, causing a passenger to be partially blown out.
In 2004, the TV show MythBusters examined whether explosive decompression occurs when a bullet is fired through the fuselage of an airplane informally by way of several tests using a decommissioned pressurised DC-9.
[16] The second incident occurred on April 17, 2018, when a woman on Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 was partially blown through an airplane passenger window that had broken from a similar engine failure.
Fictional accounts of this include a scene in Goldfinger, when James Bond kills the eponymous villain by blowing him out a passenger window[72] and Die Another Day, when an errant gunshot shatters a window on a cargo plane and rapidly expands, causing multiple enemy officials, henchmen and the main villain to be sucked out to their deaths.
Research and experience have shown that while exposure to a vacuum causes swelling, human skin is tough enough to withstand the drop of one atmosphere.
[77] One such incident occurred in 1983 in the North Sea, where violent explosive decompression from nine atmospheres to one caused four divers to die instantly from massive and lethal barotrauma.
