It’s a familiar sensation that many passengers battle when a plane takes off or lands – bringing painful ears and the feeling that someone’s turned the volume down.
If it happens on the way up, it can make for a uncomfortable feeling for the duration of a flight, which isn’t ideal if you’re bound for the other side of the world.
Thankfully, a pilot has shared an easy remedy that can ease painful ears for everyone from adults to children, who often suffer more than the grown-ups they’re travelling with.
During normal ascent and descent, there’s tricks that can help open the ear’s Eustachian tube – which runs from your middle ear to the back of the nose – to allow the pressure in the inner ear to equalise with that outside the ear.
eSIM travel company Airalo sought the advice of pilot William Hosie, who explained exactly why so many people suffer on flights.
He said: ‘Cabin pressure changes as you climb or descend in the plane. When the plane is at 35,000 feet, you’re breathing air in the cabin as if you’re at 6,000 feet.
‘The air is thinner and the air pressure is less, which is why some people have problems with toothache, and of course ears.’
The first step should be gently blowing the pressure out from the ears.
How to do it? Simply squeeze the nose with a finger and thumb, close your mouth and start to blow slowly until your cheeks are puffed out.
Ow! Ears popping at 30,000ft can be a painful experience – and is common as planes take off and land as cabin pressure changes
Prep is everything says pilot William Hosie, who advises air passengers to take boiled sweets or lollipops on board to try and stop ears from popping in the first place.
Hosie offers a word of caution though, saying don’t be too enthusiastic or passengers could harm the delicate eardrum, saying: ‘A burst eardrum can be very painful and take weeks to heal.’
And prevention is always better than cure, he advises, saying simply taking a boiled sweet or lollipop on board can stop them from popping in the first place.
Parents travelling with babies and toddlers who may not understand the pain in their ears might benefit from a bottle of milk, or a pacifier, he added.
All of these things can cause the opening in the back of the nose to stretch, allowing the air pressures to equalise – and the pain to subside.
In 2018, passengers on a Ryanair flight from Dublin to Croatia had to make an emergency landing in Frankfurt recently after the cabin lost pressure.
Following the ordeal, 33 passengers were treated in hospital, with some bleeding from their ears.
And last year, Delta Airlines passengers were left with burst eardrums and bleeding noses after their flight suddenly lost pressure and plummeted.
Passengers aboard a flight from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Portland, Oregon, felt the cabin lose pressure before the plane rapidly descended.
The plane experienced the issue at 10,275 feet in the air. Over the course of four and a half minutes, the plane descended from 33,975 feet to 25,075 feet, falling roughly 33 feet per second.
Last year, a Delta Boeing 737-900 flying from Utah to Portland had to return to Salt Lake City when the pressure dropped – leaving some passengers with bleeding ears
One passenger, Jaci Purser, said it felt like her ear was being stabbed from all of the pressure in the cabin, revealing that she ‘grabbed my ear, and I pulled my hand back, and there was blood on it’.
Aircraft usually fly at an altitude above 30,000ft, climbing or descending to get there at a rate of about 2,000ft per minute.
At 30,000ft the outside air pressure is about a third of that at sea level, causing gases to expand.
For comfort and safety, aircraft cabins are ‘pressurised’ to an altitude of somewhere between 5,000-8,000ft, which is lower than pressure at sea level.
This is why if you take a bag of crisps on the flight, it looks like it is about to burst, or when you get to your destination your shampoo has leaked into your bag.
This pressurisation also helps to keep oxygen at a level that is safe for humans.
Normally, as the plane climbs, the air in the inner ear is at a greater pressure than the cabin because it is still the same pressure as when the aircraft left the ground, so the eardrum bulges out.
During the climb, yawning, talking, drinking or swallowing cause the pressure in the inner ear to equal that of the cabin pressure at cruise level.
When the plane descends, the air pressure in the cabin begins to increase towards that at sea level, while the inner ear remains at the lower cruise-level pressure, and so the eardrum gets forced inwards, causing muffled hearing – which you may have experienced when flying.
