Aircraft are not air tight, they just pump more air in than leaks out.
If you ever have a chance to stand by the door at altitude you can feel the
air leaking out. (At a pretty impressive rate on some of these machines.)
I suspect that with the exception of a few "lucky" shot spots, explosive
decompression would not result from 9mm holes poked in the skin... or even
window.
But I'm not an engineer... my opinion is based on my Airframe & Powerplant
Mechanics degree, which I'll admit I haven't used in a few years.
Chris Davis
At 12:46 AM 9/13/01 +0100, Jim Webster wrote:
>Joe Garrett wrote:
>
>>If only one person on each of those airplanes had been armed, this would
>>never have happened. Those people could have been air marshals or private
>>citizens. It wouldn't matter.
>
>
>People do not use guns in aeroplanes for the specific reason that the
>first shot fired invariably results in explosive decompression when the
>bullet passes thru the hijacker and then the side of the aeroplane. Result
>one dead hijacker and seconds later catasrophic failure of the aeroplane
>structure and the crew/passengers are in free-fall.
>
>They have considered reduced charge ammunition but the concensus of
>opinion is that it would not put anyone down with the first shot and if
>the firer were close enough to the side of the aeroplane then the end
>result would still be the catastophic decompression.
>
>TTFN
>Jim
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 08 2001 - 10:58:58 PDT