Panic in the sky: Delta flight from Atlanta plunges nearly 30,000 feet

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by Beretta

The "plunge" was intentional. Don't believe everything you read, anywhere. Let's get our knickers untwisted. Shall we?

Originally Posted by arjay57

I agree, but a lot of passengers apparently thought it was pretty scary. The article says a number of them were panicking and hyperventilating.

Maybe it's different when you're actually in the middle of a 6 mile rapid descent and you don't really understand what's going on.

The sensationalist news story makes it sound like the plane was falling out of the sky. If this was a loss in cabin pressure, then it is standard procedure to perform a rapid descent. Those oxygen masks only have a minute or two of oxygen. They're only designed to buy enough time to get the plane down to breathable air, not to keep passengers oxygenated for the rest of the flight. Staying alive is more important than comfort!

[flyonpa]

The Spec's for the masks are 15 minutes for number of seats + 1 that the O2 Generator will serve. For 3 seats there will be 4 masks, and 60 minutes of O2.

So more then a few minutes.

If the plane is on a route that will not allow it to get down to a breathable level in 7m30s They have to have larger O2 Generators. or O2 tanks. More or Less the only route that has this requirement is flights over the Himalayan mountains. A small number of planes have on board O2 Tanks for passenger use.

The Cockpit has to have O2 Tanks for the number of seats in the Cockpit for Several Hours of O2 use.

[arjay57]

Sounds like the Delta pilots handled it well but it's not at all surprising that the passengers were frightened.

If I were on board I'd have concerns. For one thing, you don't know for sure what's going on.

[ATLTJL]

For one thing, you don't know for sure what's going on.

I think that's the key.

My level of concern would be proportionally related to how much I knew about the situation. If I knew we were descending to 10,000 feet to get to breathable air, I wouldn't be concerned at all. What we don't know is how much information the flight attendants shared with passengers.