Relating to airplane windows, it’s not hip to be square.
The form of airplane windows may appear arbitrary, but there’s actually a grim reason behind their design, in accordance with air experts.
They made them round to maintain us secure and sound.
In a TikTok video with over 2 million views, American Airlines pilot Captain Steve explained that portals with rounded edges were installed within the Nineteen Fifties following a series of inflight catastrophes brought on by their rectangular counterparts.
“A number of the airliners were designed with square windows and over in Europe as airplanes began to climb higher and require more pressurization, they found an issue,” the flyboy explained.
He added that “they lost just a few airplanes in midair” since the windows’ square shape created “a hairline crack” across the edge as a result of the stress on the airframe.
When enough of those cracks formed, the captain explained, the aircraft literally “got here apart” as a result of decompression.
To forestall these inflight freak accidents, engineers rounded the windows’ frames so that they wouldn’t break under the strain — they usually’ve “never had an issue since,” in accordance with the pilot.
Viewers were relieved to listen to the rationale behind this seemingly inconsequential design selection.
“That makes plenty of sense,” said one commenter, while one other wrote, “Thanks for the reason! The more I do know, the simpler it’s to fly.”
“I’m a terrified flight passenger!” a 3rd admitted. “But, after watching your [TikToks], Captain Steve, I wasn’t so terrified last week on my flights. Thanks!”
Captain Steve didn’t mention the incidents by name, but some viewers surmised he was referring to the UK’s ill-fated de Havilland Comet 1 Aircraft, which experienced a spate of inflight disintegrations between 1953 and 1954, per the Federal Aviation Administration.
After examining the wreckage from several of the crashes, flight forensics experts concluded that the “relatively squarish windows were creating stress concentrations much higher than anticipated.
“These stress concentrations fatigued the fabric across the window corners, which might quickly result in a rupture of the fuselage,” the FAA wrote.
