05-15-2018, 02:33 PM
mrlynn wrote:
[quote=N-OS X-tasy!]
[quote=Acer]
Wait, there's a button to depressurize the cabin?
The default state of the aircraft interior at altitude is depressurized. The pilot must actively pressurized the plane - it stands to reason he is also able to unpressurize the plane.
Wouldn't the oxygen masks come down if the plane were suddenly depressurized? Or could the pilot disable those, too? If the masks deployed, then surely a few passengers would have been able to don them before passing out.
And what about the rest of the crew? The pilot could not have depressurized the flight deck without first donning a mask himself. . .
/Mr Lynn
It's not talked about much in public, but pilot-commanded depressurization of the main cabin (without releasing the O2 masks) is a possible means of "hijacker control." The idea is to manually release the pressure valve (which every pilot has the capability to do) and knock out everybody on the other side of the door, but the catch is, they'll start to wake up again once you descend below 10,000 feet. On the other hand, if you depressurize for 6 hours at 30,000 feet, there probably isn't going to be anybody left alive (or at the very least without major brain damage) to wake up.
Regardless of whether that "feature" was used or not, what an absolute nightmare.