Plane Dives From 36,000 To 10,000 Feet In Just 10 Minutes

The passengers made a wild race on a flight from Spring Airlines Japan which seems to have suffered from a problem of cabin pressurization on Monday evening. Flighttradar24 data show that Shanghai, China’s flight JL8696 sailed at 36,000 feet. At 6:51 p.m. local time, the Boeing 737-800 briefly increased, then quickly dropped to 10,000 feet in the next ten minutes. He then had an emergency landing at Kansai International Airport near Osaka, Japan. No injury was reported for the 191 passengers and the crew, according to Simple Flying. It does not seem that anyone throws the door bolts on this one.

Although there were no physical injuries, it was a painful experience for everyone on board. The standard reports that on -board agents seemed to retain tears while oxygen masks were deployed and the plane plunged to the ocean. A passenger even wrote a note to her husband to say goodbye during the quick descent, fearing the worst. People talk about another passenger writing their will, as well as information on insurance and banks.

As scary as the experience must have been for passengers, the driving crew seems to have done everything correctly and by the book. The pressurization of the cabin is what makes the flight at high altitude and high speed possible. The loss of this pressurization requires descendant of the cruise altitude, where there is not enough oxygen in the thin air to remain aware, at 10,000 feet, where there is, as quickly as it is sure to do it without offsetting the cell.

Simple mathematics tell us that the descent of 36,000 to 10,000 feet is a change of 26,000 feet in 10 minutes, which means a descent rate of 2,600 feet per minute. It is fast, since a standard approach descends to 700 feet per minute. But it is not unknown in an emergency either, such as United Airlines Flight 510 which dropped 28,000 feet in 10 minutes due to a similar pressurization problem. A Korean air flight fell 25,000 feet in just five minutes for the same reason.

Although a little extreme, this fast descent is a standard operational procedure, as the video above shows in a simulator. The pilots immediately put their own oxygen masks, light oxygen for passengers, then plunge 10,000 feet while reducing the accelerator. These are memory elements that pilots must know by heart and execute immediately if necessary. It was only towards the end of the video that the first officer reaches a manual to continue to help the problem.