Title text:
We should have you at the gate in just under two hours--two and a half if we get pulled over.
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Source: https://xkcd.com/3124/
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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I was on a flight to Richmond, VA, many years ago. Delayed delayed, mechanical something. We finally board and depart, and right in the middle of the climb after takeoff, the plane turns real hard and heads back to the airport. People were kind of freaked out, they weren't telling us anything.
Back in the airport, we learn that there was some issue with the cabin pressure. They thought they had fixed it, they hadn't. Eventually, they decided, "Fuck it, we're going to fly across the country in this 737 at 7000 feet." Maybe a third of the passengers got back on the plane, I was one. It was cold as fuck.
why was it cold, because they couldn't maintain an internal cabin atmosphere, including temperature?
Also, I had to look it up, but just wanted to confirm 7000 feet is much lower than typical 737 cruising altitude, which is usually 30,000 - 40,000 feet.
7000 feet is still pretty high and around where oxygen saturation decreases - could you tell any effect? I just assume they were able to still oxygenate the cabin even if they couldn't go as high 🤷♀️
Anecdotally, the highest altitude I've ever been at hiking was around 11,000ft, and the group I was hiking with started feeling it a little bit around 9000-10,000 ft.
It wasn't dramatic, where we really noticed it was after we'd made camp, we had a little downtime and there was a bit of an open area, so we started throwing around a Frisbee, and running around chasing the Frisbee we could feel we were getting winded a bit quicker than we usually would.
Age, fitness, genetics, etc. will of course factor into that, but I suspect that most reasonably healthy people sitting in an airplane probably wouldn't feel much at 7000ft. Maybe they would if they were jogging up and down the aisle of the plane, but even then it probably wouldn't be anything too obvious, and if they didn't know anything about altitude sickness they'd probably chalk it up to being tired from the mental stress of air travel- getting to the airport, making the connection, security, lost baggage, etc.
I was in Ecuador recently, Quito which is 9350ft. The second the plane door opened, I felt it. Leaving the plane the air was so thin I could barely stand up. The altitude sickness was alot more for me than "being tired". And I had started altitude sickness pills 2 days before my flight.