by a Thinker, Sailor, Blogger, Irreverent Guy from Madras

Spot fixing, tampering, now Jimmying the Door


Cricket seems to be in for a bit of bother.  Rather the cricketers seem to be intent on dragging the fair name of cricket through the mud.

First we had the spot fixing controversy during the IPL and even before - with Salman Butt confessing to same a couple of days back.

Then we had the equally shameful event of ball tampering by the English cricket team.  Though they tried to brush it under, no one, except for their hard core Barmy Army supporters believed them and the ICC moved swiftly, for once, by empowering on field Umpires to act on suspicion of ball tampering.

In between we had the drunk David Warner boxing with Joe Root’s ear controversy, which took off on unexpected directions.

Telegraph reports that a drunk Sri Lankan player Ramith Rambukwella tried to open the door of the plane he was flying in - at 35,000 ft., thinking it was the door to the toilet.
Beat that!

The British Airways Boeing 777 was carrying 228 other passengers when the Sri Lankan Ramith Rambukwella went looking for the toilet and tried to open the aircraft door in mid-flight.  BA stressed that it is impossible to open the pressurised door in mid-flight.

Which sent me into a tizzy.  Because if it is not possible to open door of an aircraft in mid flight,
  • One, how do fighter pilots eject?
  • Two, there were reports of planes losing doors in mid-flight some time back.  How did that happen? 
  • Three, the main reason for failure of the Indian state owned regional carrier Vayudoot was the tendency of the doors of its aircraft to *open* in mid-flight.  Why did that happen?
Interest piqued, it was time to harness the power of Google.  Which led me to this nice article in the Nat Geo.  From that article it becomes clear that,
  • Fighter pilots eject because combat planes are not pressurized to the same extent as commercial aircraft.  Again, ejection seat is a piece of engineering by itself.  The canopy of the fighter jet is not just pushed open, but blasted out with small explosive bolts during ejection.
  • All the planes which lost doors in mid-flight were cargo planes.  Cargo compartments in those aircrafts are not (may not) be pressurized at all, or even if done so, to a minimal level.
  • Vayudoot aircraft were unpressurized (semi-pressurized) Fokker F27 and Dornier Do228, which had a service ceiling of 10,000 ft.  So theoretically if pressure equalization did take place, doors could pop open on their own.
So unless there is an accident, it is not possible to open the doors of commercial airliner, no matter how much Ramith Rambukwella tried to.

vayudoot_ticket
(image courtesy airlinehistory.co.uk)

My wicket half whispers, ‘I remember a shipmate who flew on a plane where the door popped open.  He took to calling Vayu-doot as ‘Yam-doot’ after that.’
:-D


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