In-flight opening of the pax / emergency doors

Following an in-service event where a door was intentionally opened in-flight at around 650 ft (200 m) altitude, operators have questions regarding in-flight opening of the pax/crew doors and emergency exit doors due to passenger’s inadvertence or indiscipline.

During opening of the pax/crew doors and the emergency exit doors using the inner handle, the door moves slightly inward by a few millimeters, then upward before opening outward and moving forward, parallel to the fuselage, until it is locked with the gust lock.

This initial inward and upward movement allows the door to pass the fuselage-sided stops and disengage from the door frame.

On ground, the inner handle force shall be no more than 15.0 daN for the A320 family and no more than between 18.0 and 21.0 daN for other programs.

Then, when the door is closed, as the cabin pressure increases, the contact force between each door stop and its fuselage stop counterpart increases as well. 

The higher this pressure difference will be, the higher the handle force to operate the door will become, because the door will have to move against the pressure difference

•Although door handles are not supposed to be operated when the cabin is pressurized, from a certain pressure level, it will not be possible to open the door. As per regulation (AMC 25.783), the maximum operating force to open the door is set at 136 daN (300lbs), which corresponds to a cabin differential pressure of 2 psi (138 mbar) and an altitude of around 4000 ft (1200 m).

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