Shock! Horror! Door pops open!

"Wallace Berry" wrote in message
...
There are GA aircraft whose doors will latch closed? Not sure I've ever
seen one...

Lake amphibs (LA-180, EP, Buccaneer, Renegade), for example. The doors are
hinged on a forward-facing surface, and the pressure on the door from the
slipstream is far greater in the closing direction than any minimal opening
force caused by pressure differential.

Pretty much anything with a sliding canopy (Grumman Tiger/Cheetah, Ercoupe,
Thorpe T-18, etc), of course. Without a hinge, there's no problem at all.

Anything with a canopy that opens forward, like the Diamond DA40 or Lancair
360, probably would not have any trouble either.

In fact, there's such a wide variety of cabin door designs, that I think
it's entirely possible that there are more designs that CAN be closed in
flight than that can't. Of course, the most popular designs all have that
problem, and so might outnumber the others in terms of actual numbers of
aircraft. But it's certainly not hard to find an airplane whose doors can
be closed and latched in flight.

Heck, for that matter...even those designs that "can't" be closed actually
can, given the right airspeed and airplane attitude. I probably wouldn't
bother trying, unless it was REALLY cold and I was a long way from landing.
But there's often a way.

Pete