To move a main passenger door at cruising altitude, you’d be pulling against roughly 13 metric tons of outward force — about 28,000 pounds. That figure isn’t an airworthiness rule. It’s arithmetic: 8–9 psi of cabin pressure across a door area of roughly 3,500 square inches.
On the ground, during taxi, takeoff and initial climb, before that differential builds, the same door can still be moved by hand. The useful question isn’t “can it open?” but “when does pressure make the question irrelevant?”
Ask a gate agent and you’ll get a one-word answer: no. Ask an engineer and you’ll get a quieter correction — no, not yet. The 13 tons often attached to the door question is not a secret specification buried in a type certificate.
It’s a simple pressure-area sum. The cabin is pressurised to feel like 6,000–8,000 feet, while outside air pressure at cruise is far lower. That difference pushes the door outward against its frame.
The real subject of this article isn’t the impossibility everyone already knows. It’s the transition: the few minutes of climb when pressure differential is still small, and the end of descent when it bleeds away.
In May 2023, a passenger opened an emergency exit at roughly 698 feet because the pressures were nearly equal. At 38,000 feet, the same action is out of the question. The difference between those two moments isn’t a regulation — it’s the physics of pressurisation, plus a regulator’s quiet assumption about how hard a human can pull.
Where the 13-ton figure actually comes from
At cruise, the pressure gap across the fuselage is typically 8–9 psi. For a standard door around 1.8 metres by 1.1 metres — about 3,500 square inches — that differential produces roughly 28,000 pounds of outward load, close to 13 metric tons. The door doesn’t need a lock to stay shut; the pressure does the work.
One psi equals 144 pounds per square foot, so 8 psi is 1,152 pounds per square foot. That’s exactly where the widely quoted “over 1,100 pounds per square foot” figure from aviation writer Patrick Smith lands. The two statements aren’t in tension. They’re the same physics expressed in different units.
The important caveat is that these are typical values, not certified limits. Door area and pressurisation schedules differ by aircraft. A figure originally used for a Boeing 767 or 747 shouldn’t be pasted onto every jet as a universal constant.
On the Boeing 787, for example, main entry and service doors have clear openings of 42 by 72 inches, and the mid-cabin emergency exit is 36 by 74 inches.
Those are at least in the same order of magnitude as the generic example. But Boeing’s documentation doesn’t list an official opening-force value against cabin pressure. For the Airbus A350, public type-certificate and airport-compatibility material reviewed for this piece describes door layouts and exit types without stating certified force values for every variant.
That doesn’t make the 13-ton math wrong. It makes it a physics example built on reasonable assumptions — a useful anchor, not a published performance spec.
Can you open a plane door mid-flight?
The direct answer is yes at low altitude, no at cruise. During taxi, takeoff and the first part of climb, a door can still be moved by hand. The cabin-to-outside pressure difference is tiny, and the door hasn’t yet been pinned against its frame.
Safety rules reinforce that. Under FAA design logic and Europe’s CS 25.783, pressurisation must be prevented from reaching an unsafe level while any pressurised door is not fully closed, latched and locked. The differential stays below 0.5 psi until the door is secure — an interlock, not just a sticker.
Once the aircraft climbs and pressurisation builds, the door becomes a plug. The higher pressure inside pushes it outward against its frame, so even starting the pull-inward opening sequence means fighting the full outward load. At cruise, it won’t move.
The transition between “openable” and “immovable” doesn’t occur at one dramatic altitude. It follows the aircraft’s pressurisation schedule, and the exact point shifts with the controller logic.
The Daegu incident is an exception that proves the rule. The door didn’t open against a pressurised cabin; it opened because the differential was still close to zero.
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What the controller and the handle are doing during the climb
A Boeing 737-800‘s pressurisation system shows how gradual this is. Two automatic cabin pressure controllers, pre-set with the flight and landing altitudes, modulate an outflow valve so the cabin altitude reaches about 8,000 feet at the aircraft’s 41,000-foot ceiling. The differential builds step by step with the climb, not at one switch point.
On the ground, that outflow valve is fully open. On descent, it reopens to bleed the differential away.
If the crew switches to manual mode, the valve moves faster and the cabin differential changes more quickly. So the “openable window” at the end of a flight is as real as the one after takeoff.
Regulators also make a quiet assumption about human strength. FAA guidance hosted by the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) says operating forces beyond 300 pounds on a pressurised-compartment door handle need not be considered.
That’s roughly the weight of a large motorcycle. The same guidance treats 2 psi as the differential above which door opening should not normally be possible.
What the document doesn’t provide is the actual yield or failure load of the latch and handle assembly. There’s no public structural breaking point. The design simply assumes your arm won’t get close.
What this means for you
For a nervous flyer, the practical takeaway is narrower than most door explainers suggest. Cruise is the safest part of the question — the door is not going to open because the pressure differential is enormous. The realistic window is the first few minutes after takeoff and the last few minutes before landing, when the differential is still building or has already bled away.
On the modern Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 used on many Asia-Pacific long-haul routes, the doors are at least as large as older types, and the certification system covers the closed-latched-locked interlock through design proof rather than published marketing numbers. The absence of certified force figures isn’t a sign of weaker doors. It means the manufacturers treat that number as internal engineering, not a public spec.
If someone ever did attempt a door at cruise, the limiting factor wouldn’t be willpower. It would be the handle and latch assembly, built around a design assumption that your arm will fail long before the locks do.
Questions? Answers.
Has anyone ever opened a plane door mid flight?
Yes — in May 2023, a passenger opened an emergency exit on an Asiana flight approaching Daegu at roughly 213 metres, about 698 feet, above the ground. South Korean officials said the exit could be opened because cabin and outside pressures were similar at that low altitude. At cruise pressure, the same action would not be possible.
How much force does it take to open a plane door mid flight?
At cruise, a typical door’s 3,500 square inches under an 8–9 psi pressure differential produces roughly 28,000 pounds of outward load — close to 13 metric tons. Patrick Smith’s “over 1,100 pounds per square foot” figure is the same 8 psi expressed per square foot. Regulators design handles around a maximum human force of 300 pounds, far below what cruise differential demands.
Why are we not allowed to open the door in an airplane?
At low altitude the primary reason is safety, turbulence, and rapid evacuation risks, not physical impossibility. In cruise, the door is held shut by pressure differential because the cabin is pressurised to about 6,000–8,000 feet equivalent. Design rules also require doors to be fully closed, latched and locked before pressurisation is allowed, and keep differential below 0.5 psi when a door is unsecured.
