Why are Air Plane Windows so small?

Question

Any good reason?

Answer 1

AgcataV8 has a major point - the UK Comet ( also known in development as the Nimrod - remember being called one of THOSE in the '60s and '70s? It meant you're a failure ) had absolutely square windows...it was the first operational transatlantic jet, and the British were ahead of the rest of world in the technological development, until the catastrophic failures, so no one wanted to fly them anymore,and the British aero-industry lost ground they never made up. They fixed the problems, and told the world what made it happen, but no one wanted to trust the Comet after that. The square windows had developed stress cracks at the corners, and the metal had fatigued, then finally gave out and the jets came apart. So rounded, smaller windows were engineered.

  Most airplane designers would LOVE to do away with them altogether, but since passengers love to look out, and they'd have a hard time selling tickets to fly inside an enclosed can, the compromise has been to have smaller windows. So until someone develops transparent aluminum for real, small windows will be the norm.

- The Gremlin Guy -

Answer 2

lawyers

Answer 3

You'll understand if you study the dehavilland comet incident

Answer 4

When the plane is in the air, the air pressure outside is considerable lower than the cabin pressure. This cabit pressure is adjusted to equal sea-level pressure to keep the passengers comfortable. This is about 15 pounds per square inch. (PSI)  On a small window say 12inches square, that is 144 SQ inches, this would be 2160 pounds of pressure.  If the windows were larger, then the glass would have to be much thicker to resist the pressure (like the deep sea subs) and this would increase the weight of the aicraft and the thickness of the glass would make it difficult to see much scenery anyway.

Answer 5

The reasons are as explained below:

Windows on aircraft are small to maximise the areas of hull between them, to increase the strength of the air frame. The air frame would be stongest if the hull had no windows. Large windows were the cause of the loss of several De Havilland Comets (the world's first, UK built, commercial jet aircraft) as the strain put on the hull due to pressurisation caused metal fatigue in the slim areas of hull between windows, leading to at least two catastrophic ruptures at altitude.

To summarize, any discontinuity in the skin of the aircraft compromises its strength and potentially complicates the airflow. Big windows make weak fuselages.

Answer 6

The bigger the window the stronger the surrounding structure and window thickness has to be.  It also increases the factor of cracks to increase. Next time you walk into an airplane look at how thick the fuselage skin is a a door opening.  If you look at how many windows there are it would increase the the weight of the aircraft alot which leads  to higher fuel cost.  Then the increase in size leads to more inspections due to size which cost in maintaining goes up . It can be been done but when a carrier buys an aircraft they are lookng for the overall operating cost to be cheap.

Answer 7

if they were bigger the chances that they would break (due to air pressure or accidents inside the plane) would be greater.

and its a bad thing if they break .

Answer 8

if they made them any bigger, the structural integrity of the plane would be compromised causinf metal or windows to rip away from the planes structure in mid flight. It all has to do with physics.

Answer 9

All of the above answers are correct.  Smaller windows = stronger windows.  Also, the windows are rounded at the corners rather than square for the same reason.  A 90 degree corner has a higher probability to start cracking than from a rounded area.  Structural integrity is the bottom line.