What really happens if you open a plane door mid-flight? Pilot reveals all

What happens when you flush the toilet mid-flight? Or if you try to open a plane door? One pilot has written a book about the common myths around flying and revealed the truth about air travel.

Patrick Smith's Cockpit Confidential features chapters on delays, terrorism and fares, while answering questions, like how planes fly and what are the causes of crashes.

When it comes to opening a door mid-flight, Smith writes: "You cannot – repeat, cannot – open the doors or emergency hatches of an airplane in flight. You can't open them for the simple reason that cabin pressure won't allow it. Think of an aircraft door as a drain plug, fixed in place by the interior pressure."

According to the Daily Mail, Smith says waste from the toilets is no longer made into heavy frozen blocks. On modern planes, the toilet system has been replaced by a vacuum so when the toilet is flushed a valve opens to a sewer pipe and the waste is sucked into a tank.

News.com.au reports that passengers shouldn't be worried about the noises on planes either.

Smith writes: "It's common to hear a loud, repetitive whirring sound emanating from the floorboards of Airbus planes. Sometimes it's a high-pitched whine; other times it's a stilted WOOF, WOOF, WOOF, like the noise a very agitated dog might make."

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