Cabin fever

The Lizard is a frequent flyer, so when the Ryanair depressurisation incident hit the news-stands it gave the Lizard pause for thought.

We’ve all sat through the pre-flight chat from the cabin staff about how if deprerssurisation occurs masks will drop down, to then hold them over ones face and breathe normally. Well we now know from passengers on the flight that normal was nowhere in sight.

The Lizard decided to find out more.

Passenger planes fly at altitudes of over 30,000ft. Up in the stratosphere there is so little oxygen that humans only have about twelve seconds before they start to become disoriented, pass out and eventually die. Presumably in a plane the time frame is a little longer – but not by much.

When cabin pressure fails the pilot executes a well-rehearsed procedure.

He needs to get the plane down from the normal cruising altitude to around 8,000ft feet where passengers can breathe normally. The only problem is he doesn’t have long as the emergency oxygen supply only last for about twelve minutes. As a result, the plane is put into a five minute, white-knuckle dive.

During the Ryanair incident passengers complained that nobody told them what was going on. Given the emergency and the fact that both the crew and the cabin staff were wearing face masks this was hardly surprising.

The Lizard listened to one of the passengers on Radio 4’s Today programme. Pen Hadow, an arctic explorer, said that there was no warning and that most passengers thought they were going to die, but he also claimed that the oxygen supply from the face masks didn’t work.

Ryanair claim there was oxygen but that the flow is very light and not easy to detect.

Because of the steep descent many of the passengers suffered damage to their ears – whether this is long term or just temporary is unclear.

In any one year about six of these events take place.

So perhaps next time you fly you’ll pay a little more attention to that tedious pre-flight announcement.

The Lizard makes no claim to be an expert on this matter - if you know more get in touch.