[xoxoxoBruce]

I’ve flown on commercial airliners a zillion times and at the beginning of each flight carefully checked out the stewardesses boobs while she gave us the safety drill.
Maybe that’s why I was surprised today when I was reading this article in the Wall Street Journal about the Cypriot Airliner crash in Greece.

snip~~ At cruising altitudes of more than 30,000 feet, the occupants of an aircraft are heavily dependent on cabin pressurization and climate control to stay alive. Normally, cabins are pressurized to the equivalent of 8,000 feet above sea level. If there is some sort of failure, which appears to be the case in the crash of the Helios Airways Boeing 737, the crew and passengers must react within seconds to don their emergency oxygen masks before losing consciousness.

For passengers, the importance of donning masks quickly is underscored subtly in every U.S. airline's preflight briefing, when travelers are told to put on their own mask before helping children or others. According to the FAA, the time of "useful consciousness" after a rapid depressurization can range from under a second to about 30 seconds, depending on the individual and the circumstances.

When decompressions do occur, they can be drastic and uncomfortable. A sudden loss of pressurization can result in piercingly painful ear blockage, loss of consciousness -- even exploding dental work as pressures within the human body try to come back into balance with external air pressure.

On passenger airliners, there are two separate emergency oxygen systems. Pilots have one that consists of so-called quick-don face masks attached to oxygen bottles. They are located within reach of both pilots are designed to be put on in five seconds or less. Emergency procedures, which are trained until they become rote, call for the pilots to immediately begin a rapid descent of about 3,000 feet a minute, much more noticeable than the 300 feet to 500 feet a minute of a routine descent.

Passengers have a less-sophisticated system that relies on oxygen-generating canisters that are attached to yellow plastic cups that drop from overhead. These canisters are activated by pulling sharply on the mask, starting a chemical process that generates oxygen for about 15 minutes.

"Neither one of these systems is designed to provide oxygen for continued flight at higher altitudes," says Rogers V. Shaw II, a team leader at the Federal Aviation Administration's Civil Aero Medical Institute in Oklahoma City. "They are designed to get you down to a safe altitude." ~~snip

1 to 30 seconds! Holy cow...I thought I'd be good for as long as I can hold my breath.