this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2024
84 points (93.8% liked)

No Stupid Questions

36109 readers
829 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

DISCLAIMER – I am not planning on smashing the window on an airplane.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 42 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Halfway decent comment so adding more:

The emergency descent altitude is almost always 10,000 feet. This is because most people will be able to breath without the oxygen mask at this altitude. But, do not take off your mask.

They do not descend lower because, succinctly, what if all engine power is lost? If that happens then the pilots want enough altitude to have enough time to try and restart the engines and, failing engine restart, to extend gliding range in effort to maximize choices of where to land.

Qualifications: expired VFR license (not a commercial pilot)

[–] SzethFriendOfNimi 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

And to add to the conversation(if there’s anything incorrect please let me know) from videos I’ve seen by MentourPilot, Captain Joe and online sources

The process will most likely look like the following (assuming an emergency descent is needed because the cabin can’t be pressurized like with the window vs some smaller hole air leak):

  • They will put on their own o2 masks (it’s critical to do this as you can lose consciousness in under a minute)

  • They will set the transponder to a code that denotes the emergency to both ATC and nearby traffic

  • They will radio the distress both for ATC but also nearby planes to give them a heads up that they’ll be rapidly descending. If it’s in a high traffic area they may wait for approval to begin descent (and you can be sure ATC is going to be moving planes out of the way.). If it’s taking too long they will begin descending anyway.

  • They’ll announce to the cabin that they’re doing an emergency descent

  • They will start a rapid descent to 10,000 ft (if terrain allows it, otherwise down to whatever they can safely get to). This is because the emergency o2 is limited to about 15 minutes.

Some interesting things I learned about this.

They will often use autopilot for the descent and level flight. This is because of limited visibility and a risk of possible issues caused by low o2.

They turn on all lights to make sure they’re as visible as possible to other traffic.

This descent will be really unpleasant. Not a gentle descent but the safest one (especially if they’re unsure if there’s any structural issues) they can do. Which will be quite a bit steeper than anybody is used to.

So passengers on the plane will experience this as:

  • Loud rushing noise. Possible moisture filling the cabin now that you have outside cold air mixing with warm air and surfaces inside

  • Masks dropping and seatbelt signs

  • Shortly after the Captain saying “Emergency descent” 3 or so times

  • Flight screw scrambling to seats and putting on masks

  • The sound of the wings adjusting for speed brakes, shuddering from the flight profile change,

  • The sounds of the engines being revved up to the planes maximum speed as the nose of the plane tipping down. It will feel like it’s faster than it really is with the shift in gravity followed by being pressed back due to the increase in speed during descent.

  • The plane shifting as they turn away from the main traffic area as they descend (unless told otherwise by ATC, etc)

Not a fun experience I’m sure

Some sources to check out

Emergency descend!! Cockpit video

Explosive decompression at Simulador TCP. EAS Barcelona pilot school

Pressurisation Problems: Guidance for Flight Crews

Aircraft "Falling" - Emergency descend explained

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

Expired VFR from above:

Think about "aviate, navigate, communicate" and add to your pilot procedure. For example, the first priority is that the pilot in command establish straight and level flight.

Also, relate that descent to things people know, such as the typical max climb and descent angles passengers experience and the maximum grade found on US interstates.

Your work is pretty good. I encourage you to pick up the textbooks used in flight school. There's lots of ways to be a pilot without actually obtaining a VFR license, such as a recreational license or MS Flight Simulator. You can even get a taste with a type of skydive called an "assisted free fall".