What Would Happen If You Tried to Open the Airplane Emergency Door Mid-flight?

The most important thing in the exit row on a plane isn’t the extra legroom—it’s the emergency door. These doors are strategically located throughout the aircraft so that passengers can easily evacuate, regardless of whether they’re in first class or the last row. The Airbus A380—the world’s largest commercial aircraft—has 16 emergency doors. That’s approximately one for every 50 passengers. While part of the flight attendant safety speech includes pointing out where the nearest emergency doors can be found, it doesn’t include the answer to one burning question. What happens if you try to open the emergency door mid-flight? 

Is it possible to open the emergency door mid-flight? 

If you ask American Airlines First Officer Steve Scheibner, nothing would happen if you tried to open the door—because you can’t open the emergency door mid-flight. Unless you’re capable of lifting 25,000 pounds, it’s physically impossible. “Once this door gets pressurized in flight, it’s nine pounds per square inch,” says Scheibner, who goes by Captain Steeeve on TikTok where he has more than 380,000 followers. Another pilot-turned-social media sensation explains it further on YouTube: “We pressurize our aircraft to a lower altitude so that you guys can breathe,” says Pilot PascalKlr. “The inside pressure pushes the door in its frame.” Scientists liken it to how a drain plug works. Given the small size of sink and bath drains, it takes a substantial amount of effort to pick them up. Also, most emergency exit doors on planes open inwards. 

Still, physics isn’t the only thing keeping emergency doors closed during flights. On most commercial aircraft, all cabin doors automatically lock once the plane has reached a certain speed. According to Scheibner, it’s approximately 80 knots (92 miles per hour). They can’t be manually unlocked until the plane slows down again. Obviously, these locks weren’t customary back in 1971 when the infamous “D.B. Cooper” parachuted out of a Boeing 727’s rear door with £200,000 in cash somewhere over southeastern Washington. In fact, because hijacking passenger planes was common in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) amended their safety regulations in 1972 and started requiring large passenger aircraft exits to be designed so that they can’t be opened during flight. 

What happens if someone tries to open an emergency door mid-flight? 

Even though it’s not possible to open an emergency door mid-flight, people have tried. In fact, every year passengers make headlines for trying to do so. A few weeks ago, an All Nippon Airways flight from Tokyo to Houston was diverted to Seattle after an unruly passenger kept trying to open the emergency doors. Cabin crew and fellow passengers managed to restrain him using zip ties. Upon landing in Seattle, the passenger was handed over to the local police and FBI. And when an American Airlines passenger on a flight from Albuquerque to Chicago tried to open an emergency door 20 minutes into their flight last year, the plane returned to Albuquerque where law enforcement was waiting. 

If the plane isn’t far from its final destination, it will usually try to land there. That’s what happened on another American Airlines flight in 2024 when a passenger flying from Milwaukee to Dallas attempted to open an emergency door mid-flight. A flight attendant was injured in the process, and the man was charged with a federal crime. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison. At the very least, trying to open an emergency door mid-flight is a great way to get yourself on the dreaded no-fly list. 

While most passengers who try to open emergency doors fail, at least one appears to have succeeded. In 2023, a passenger on an Asiana flight about to land in Daegu, South Korea allegedly opened the emergency door he was sitting next to. The plane was more than 700 feet off the ground at the time. While the plane was able to safely land, and no one was seriously injured, 12 people went to the hospital and were treated for hyperventilation. “The wind was stinging my legs and hitting my face so hard I couldn’t even breathe properly,” the passenger sitting next to him recalled in an interview with CNN. Asiana immediately launched an investigation to see how the door was able to be opened. It also issued a statement saying it would stop selling certain exit row seats on its Airbus A321-200 aircraft. 

But this doesn’t exactly mean that sitting next to an emergency door is dangerous. On the contrary, some experts say the exit row boasts the safest seats on the plane. “If there was a seat that was safer, being close to an emergency exit increases the chance of getting out quicker,” Cary Grant, an assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s College of Aviation, previously told T+L.