Passenger tries to open emergency door on plane trip from Orlando to Boston

Since it is quite impossible to explode a bomb in a plane and get some cutters or whatever on-board, this is maybe the terrorists last resort.

What a waste of a good spacious leg room seat. Off duty cop thought fast. Imagine if he had been asleep?

@ TumbleDry: I thought the security measures were there to prevent the terrorists to get on board the plane in the first place. If this person is really a terrorist (instead of a mad man), then someone's got to go over those measures one more time.

You can't even carry nail clippers on board anymore. I guess TumbleDry's thoughts are as good as any.

Airplane doors open inward for a reason: under normal flight, the higher pressure of the cabin compared with the outside makes it virtually impossible for the door to open. You can unlatch it and tug on it all you'd like, but it won't open unless the plane's interior pressure is not much higher than the exterior - i.e., in the case of depressurization, in which case there are most likely other more pressing concerns than an open door; or when the plane is at a low altitude, in which case an open door wouldn't cause much of a problem.

Kronos: that was sarcasms. I think the guy is just insane.

Given all the stress involved in taking a flight nowadays, on top of many people's natural nervousness of flying which can develop into phobia, it's not surprising that someone would snap and do a "Let me off this tin can of death!" freakout.

Laguna: the higher pressure of the cabin compared with the outside makes it virtually impossible for the door to open.

Seems that should have been mentioned in the article instead of letting people's imaginations run wild.

Yes, thanks for that info Laguna. I'd been wondering for a while that it seemed a bit too easy to just open the door in mid-flight, and surprised at the lack of concern by the airline personnel. That explains it.

Sounds like another Darwin award.

The Darwin Award goes to those planes whose doors opened outward; they used to exist but don't anymore for obvious reasons.

Open, slide in and to the right. If everyone was strapped in, the guy could have been pushed out, door slid closed, to the left, and finished. There would have been one piece of baggage going around and around for hours on end.

Seems that should have been mentioned in the article instead of letting people's imaginations run wild.

Seems pretty obvious based on the physics, doesn't it? A non-plug door would be a huge safety hazard without the threat of terrorism.

Yawns! No body was in any danger. With the pressure difference and the door has to come in first before opening. Silly hype and nonsense really a non news event.

"is THIS the bathroom?"

You can't stop crazy people from being crazy. Every year a small percent of the population tries to commit suicide. Of those, a small percentage of them try to take other people with them. Just accept it and deal with it as the situation allows, and move along. Nothing to see here.