We’ve all been through it. You settle down in your flight and soon after it takes off, your ears pop. Normally, you’ll do some basic breathing exercises, try and swallow, bust out some some yoga moves, and eventually your hearing returns to normal.
It happens because the air pressure on a flight is usually lower than that of the surface. And this is when airplanes are pressurised.
Imagine if some mistake, some malfunction, prevents that cabin pressure from being maintained.
Last week, many passengers of a Jet Airways 9W 697 flight from Mumbai to Jaipur, took to social media to narrate their mid air horror. Almost 30 passengers had ear and nose bleed and the flight had to turn back. All because someone forgot to turn on the bleed switch, that maintains the cabin pressure as the flight takes off.