Mitt Romney (Source: Chris Devers (CC))

A few days ago, Ann Romney’s plane had to make an emergency landing because of smoke in the cabin. That is a scary situation. Even scarier is the response from man who wants to be the next passenger on Air Force One.

“I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.”

A lot of people may not know the specific reasons why an airplane window can’t be opened, but at least they know it would be such a stupid idea to consider that they dismiss it immediately.

There are three reasons that come to mind immediately and there are probably more. First, open the window at 35,000 feet and the low pressure on the outside is going to suck anything it can from the high-pressure interior. Second, at 35,000 it is damn cold outside. No one wants that in the airplane. Third, it isn’t going to work getting oxygen to come into the airplane at 35,000 feet because the air is much thinner at the elevation. It would be nearly impossible for someone to get enough oxygen.

Neverthless, cracking open the window on a flight will clear out the smoke. Unfortunately, it will just replace it with freezing, oxygen-limited air that wants to yank the passengers through the window.

I hope Romney was just joking. He must have been joking. If nothing else, Romney needs to explain this off as a joke so we can all laugh and forget.  The alternative is to have a candidate close to being elected president who ponders why airplanes don’t have pop-out windows.