At the hearing, Mr. Hinderberger addressed concerns over the potential effects handgun fire could have on an aircraft’s structure.
“The risk of loss of the aircraft due to a stray round from a handgun is very slight,” said Hinderberger. “Boeing commercial service history contains cases of gunfire onboard in-service airplanes, all of which landed safely.”
“Commercial airplane structure is designed with sufficient strength, redundancy and damage tolerance that single or even multiple handgun bullet holes would not result in loss of the aircraft. A single bullet hole in the fuselage skin would have little effect on cabin pressurization.”
“On fourteen occasions Boeing commercial aircraft have survived and landed after an in-flight bomb blast.”
house.gov
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Aircraft are designed to survive and land after a rapid decompression resulting
from the loss of a cargo door, approximately 20 square feet of surface and related structure, and have done so.
Finally, we all recall the 737 accident over the Hawaiian Islands in
1988, when
the airplane landed after losing approximately one-third of the upper
part of its
fuselage. While truly heroic and skillful flying were critical in this
situation, the
structure of the aircraft held together, enabling all but one person
to survive.
All of these types of events are generally greater than the impact of bullet holes on an aircraft.
lpo.org
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one more Lazarus--MISGUIDED REASON #1: Guns can cause a massive depressurization in a plane.
One objection that Congressmen have given for not wanting to arm pilots is the supposed idea that a bullet hole in an airplane's hull can cause catastrophic depressurization or cause the ship to crash.
However, writer David Kopel (along with author and pilot, Captain David Petteys) notes that the risks related to the hull being punctured are greatly exaggerated. In a recent National Review Online article dated September 16, they state, "There is only one known instance in which a bullet hole in an aircraft frame yanked objects across the plane, expanded, and sucked a person out into the sky. That was the James Bond movie Goldfinger. The movie was not intended to teach real-life lessons about physics."
In a follow-up article, Dave Kopel notes that "the risk of a stray bullet creating a decompression that could cause a crash, which I'd reported to be virtually nil, is apparently even less than that. Retired Air Force General James Chambers points out that the Air Force has plenty of pressurized planes, such as AWACS, which are able to sustain penetration/damage from bullets from enemy fighter jet machine guns. The General said that the worst case would simply require a plane flying at an altitude of about 30,000 feet to hurry down to lower altitudes. If the plane were above 30,000 feet, there would probably be enough breathable air for the pilots to maintain consciousness, even without the air masks."
Aircraft engineers have likewise downplayed the ability of a few bullets to depressurize a plane.
"First of all, there already is a 'hole' in the aircraft, for regulating the cabin pressure," says Dan Todd, a licensed aircraft engineer for 20 years. "It's called the outflow valve. It modulates to maintain desired cabin pressure, in response to signals from a cabin pressure controller, which responds to inputs from a selector panel in the cockpit, all automatic when it's all working normally.
"There's also always pressurized cabin air leaking out past door seals and a few other places," Todd says. "Remember, the airplane is pressurized by a constant flow of compressed air into the cabin from the engines (via the pneumatic systems and the air conditioning systems).
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