What happens when your flight loses cabin pressure
Minutes after the oxygen masks dropped down from above the seats, Harrison Hove detected an unnerving burning smell. Shortly before that, on his American Airlines flight earlier this month from Charlotte to Gainesville, Fla., his ears had mysteriously popped. Many passengers were confused and unaware of what had happened. Hove said the next 20 minutes felt like hours.
Eventually, pilots announced that the cabin had experienced “a possible pressurization issue,” and descended the plane from around 30,000 feet to 10,000 feet in mere minutes, the airline said in a statement. During this time, Hove said there wasn’t aggressive turbulence or hysteria from passengers, but he could feel a quick, downward slope ride.
“It was not like a roller coaster at all — it wasn’t uncomfortable. I wasn’t thinking the plane was ever out of control,” said Hove, who serves as associate chair at the University of Florida’s journalism department. “Any ‘woos’ you would feel in your stomach were very brief and not significant.”
Movies such as “Air Force One” and “Final Destination” often portray depressurization scenarios with gaping holes in windows, luggage flying out of overhead compartments or even plane doors being ripped off. The reality typically isn’t as extreme as Hollywood depictions would have you believe, and the most recent malfunction illustrates what happens when an airplane loses cabin pressure.
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