Aloha Airlines Flight 243
Image source: @OnDisasters (https://x.com/OnDisasters)
Do People Ever Fall Out of Planes Mid-Flight?
This is an odd question asked from Quora. Under normal circumstances, people don’t fall out of planes mid-flight because the doors of an airliner cannot be opened in flight unless accidentally ejected due to rapid decompression or other abnormal causes.
On April 28, 1988, such an accident occurred with Aloha Airlines Flight 243 in Hawaii. The expulsion was caused by explosive decompression resulting from the structural failure of the aircraft’s fuselage. Similarly, people can be sucked out of a plane in scenarios such as the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 incident, where the door blew out.
The survival outcome of a fall from any plane is generally very poor. In the Aloha Airlines case, the flight attendant who was ejected over the sea was never found. However, there have been at least two freak accidents where people have survived a fall from a plane in mid-flight.
On December 24, 1971, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke was thrown out of an airplane after it was struck by lightning. She fell two miles to the ground, still strapped to her seat. Miraculously, she survived the fall with a broken collarbone, a deep gash on her right arm, an eye injury, and a concussion.
On January 26, 1972, following a suspected briefcase bomb explosion that brought down an aircraft over the mountains of Czechoslovakia, Vesna Vulović, a flight attendant aboard a JAT Airlines plane, miraculously survived a fall from 33,000 feet. Investigators discovered that Vesna had become trapped in a food cart in the tail section of the aircraft, which landed on snow and thereby cushioned her fall.
Juliane and Vesna were extremely lucky. Juliane’s fall occurred from 10,000 feet, while Vesna’s was from 33,000 feet.
What about falls from a plane on the ground?
On January 9, 2024, a passenger was injured after opening the door of an Air Canada aircraft at Toronto Pearson Airport and falling to the tarmac during boarding for a flight to Dubai. Instead of going to his seat, he opened the cabin door at the opposite end of the Boeing 777 and walked off the plane. He sustained injuries from the fall.
On May 16, 2024, an airport ground staff worker fell from the passenger door of a TransNusa A320 when a stepladder was moved away from the plane at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Indonesia.
The ground staff member was speaking with someone inside the Airbus A320 and attempting to step out, only to fall when the steps were unexpectedly moved away from the front door of the aircraft.
Thankfully, he didn’t receive serious injuries and was treated in a local hospital for broken bones.
Indeed, people do fall out of planes mid-flight, but only in very abnormal circumstances. Survivability is largely a matter of luck.
See YouTube video “Airline Worker Falls Off Airbus A320 As Ground Staff Remove Ladder At Jakarta Airport In Indonesia”
here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZGwPaID9QY
View YouTube video of “Man falls from cabin door of Air Canada plane at Pearson”