Here’s something that doesn’t happen often, but is quite scary to think about…
In this post:
Asiana A321 exit door opened on approach
This incident happened today (Friday, May 26, 2023), and involves Asiana Airlines flight OZ8124, scheduled to operate the short 205-mile domestic flight in South Korea from Jeju (CJU) to Daegu (TAE). The service was operated by a roughly 11-year-old Airbus A321 with the registration code HL8256.
While the aircraft was on its final descent (at under 1,000 feet), a man in his 30s reportedly tried to open the emergency exit door. Specifically, this man was seated in the window seat at the third set of exit doors on the left. He managed to successfully open the door, which caused quite some chaos in the cabin, as you’d expect.
Fortunately no one was sucked out of the plane (since it was going at fairly slow speeds at this point, and there wasn’t a significant pressurization difference), though at least six passengers had to be hospitalized.
Witnesses onboard claim that after opening the door, the suspect tried to jump out. Flight attendants asked other passengers for help, and people seated around the exit door prevented the man from jumping out of the aircraft. It’s not clear if that was the motive, or what exactly was going on. As you’d expect, he remains in police custody.
Below you can see some video footage of the incident.
Aircraft exit doors can be opened inflight?!
There’s often confusion about the ability to open emergency exit doors on an aircraft while it’s flying. It would be impossible to open an emergency exit at cruising altitude, given the pressure difference between the interior of the plane and the outside atmosphere.
While some people like to claim that you can only open emergency exit doors on the ground, that’s not quite the case on all the aircraft, as you can tell. At a lower altitude, the pressure difference isn’t as great as at 30,000+ feet, so opening the door does become a bit easier. For that matter, exit doors on the A321 are power assisted, so can be opened just by pulling the lever.
Note that on some aircraft, doors remain locked until the plane touches down. Clearly that’s not the case on the Airbus A321, though.
For what it’s worth, when you hear a flight attendant announce “arm doors for departure and cross check,” the process of “arming” the door consists of “locking it,” so that an emergency slide would deploy if the exit opens. The door can just as easily be disarmed, so that doesn’t “lock” the door and prevent others from opening it, or anything.
Bottom line
Passengers on an Asiana flight in South Korea had a rather eventful approach, as a passenger seated in the exit row opened the emergency exit door before landing. Fortunately there were no fatalities, but several people were taken to the hospital.
For all the misbehavior we see on planes, this is something that’s quite rare. Witnesses claim that the man tried to jump out of the aircraft but was ultimately stopped by other passengers. It’s not yet clear if that was his motivation for opening the door, or if that was just a spur of the moment decision.
What do you make of this Asiana emergency exit situation?
This would terrify me. I could easily imagine having a panic attack under these circumstances. This would be a lot more than I signed up for when I got on the flight, and even though the logical part of my brain might accept that we are not getting sucked out of the plane at that altitude, the less logical part of my brain is going to initiate rapid breathing.
Can we establish a common understanding...
This would terrify me. I could easily imagine having a panic attack under these circumstances. This would be a lot more than I signed up for when I got on the flight, and even though the logical part of my brain might accept that we are not getting sucked out of the plane at that altitude, the less logical part of my brain is going to initiate rapid breathing.
Can we establish a common understanding of MINIMUM BASIC CIVILITY AND SAFETY? Don't open the door while the plane is still flying. Don't light things on fire. Don't yell at or physically harm the flight attendants. Don't engage in rude behavior toward or physically harm other passengers. Is this too much to ask?
The breathing bags didn't deploy. Airbus or whoever needs to recalibrate what the sudden air pressure difference needs to be for it to deploy considering some kids had to be sent to the hospital on this flight.
Nope. Plenty of oxygen in the air at 1’000 feet.
They probably got hit with flying debris, or some other trauma.
The exit doors on A321 are power assisted, so it opens automatically if only you pull the lever. You don't need any strength to open the door.
See how the door opens: https://youtu.be/uDqPpXZI5q4?t=5
Boeing aircrafts have a feature that locks the exit doors until touchdown, but A321s don't seem to have it, so the doors can open in the air at low altitude.
Also in Asiana's configuration, there's no crew seat at all...
The exit doors on A321 are power assisted, so it opens automatically if only you pull the lever. You don't need any strength to open the door.
See how the door opens: https://youtu.be/uDqPpXZI5q4?t=5
Boeing aircrafts have a feature that locks the exit doors until touchdown, but A321s don't seem to have it, so the doors can open in the air at low altitude.
Also in Asiana's configuration, there's no crew seat at all around exit L3 and R3. Almost a half of A321s in the world are configured like this.. There's no crew that monitors these exits during taxi, takeoff and landing.
https://www.aerolopa.com/oz-321-1
You last few sentences seem a bit blame-ish. It's not like Boeings are any different.
On any given 737, there's at most 5 FAs under western labor regulations, typically 3 on the -300s/-500s/-600s/-700s. Suffice to say, that's not enough to man all doors.
I don't blame the crew seat stuff.. What to blame is "flight lock" which is on Boeing and not on Airbus A321ceo.
With "flight lock" how can we send a mid-air rescue team from another plane if you can't open the doors.
How can another hijacker pull a modern day DB Cooper and parachute out.
Most importantly, non-Hollywood, how do you know the lock would not fail to disengage in an actual emergency.
That's why every commercial planes need to have individual air nozzles.
"9 people taken to hospital with breathing difficulties."
Confirming it's an air nozzle problems.
There's an open aircraft door 1,000' feet up and I'm being asked to stand close to it to prevent him from jumping out? Um, my solution would be a lot simpler and save everyone from a lot of trouble.
There's a risk of "debris" ejected from the cabin hitting something (maybe the horizontal stabilizer) and making things a whole lot worse.
Great CRM though, keep it up
Well at least he paid attention to the exit row safety briefing and card instructing him how to operate the door
He was probably just trying to get away from Tim “Dumb”…. He was probably droning on mindlessly on how much better Delta is and this person felt the need to escape!
Wow Gaybe - you really had to force that joke in there, didn’t you? How completely unfunny
Actually harkening back to “Airplane 2” with fellow passengers being talked to death by the little old woman seatmate it is a bit humorous….and of course Tim kind of deserves it…but yes Gaybe has been going a bit overboard these days.
No one was sucked out because of low speed or because the plane was at low altitude?
Passengers probably had their seatbelts on but also the pressure differential is not going to be very much when the door was opened so the overall sensation would be like driving with a window open...just much higher speeds.
The seat belt was strong enough and also low altitude hence little wind typically.
Dang, it's one of those where you kinda admire the boldness and sheer craziness, but it's also obviously a dumb thing to do that injured a few people. Gotta get some doctors to work with the guy.
Is it me or is South Korea getting crazier the more Kpop becomes more popular
It’s you