A recent viral TikTok video featuring a veteran pilot has shed light on a little-known aspect of air travel history – why airplane windows are round instead of square. Captain Steve, an experienced pilot with a significant following on TikTok, took to the platform to share this crucial piece of aviation history. In his video, which has garnered over 2.3 million views, he explains that in the 1950s, airplanes initially had square windows.
This design choice, however, proved fatally flawed. As aircraft began to fly at higher altitudes, requiring increased cabin pressurization, a serious problem emerged. With their sharp corners, the square windows became stress points on the airplane’s structure. These corners acted as weak spots. Cracks could form and propagate, leading to catastrophic failures.
Tragic Consequences Of Square Airplane Windows
The consequences of this design flaw were dire. Captain Steve revealed that several planes were lost in midair due to structural failures caused by these square windows. The airframes came apart during flight, resulting in tragic accidents and loss of life.
“They lost a few airplanes in the air,” Captain Steve explained in his video. “The airplanes literally came apart because the square windows created a little crack right in the edges. And, if enough of those hairline cracks were created because of the stress on the airframe from the pressurization, the airframes actually came apart.”
Responding to these tragic events, aviation engineers returned to the drawing board. They realized that the sharp corners of square windows were creating stress concentration points where the material was most likely to fail under extreme high-altitude flight conditions. The solution they devised was elegantly simple yet highly effective – rounded windows. By eliminating the sharp corners, the stress is distributed more evenly around the window frame, significantly reducing the risk of cracks forming and propagating.
This design change has proven to be one of aviation’s most important f. Since the introduction of rounded windows, there have been no reports of structural failure due to window design. “They are stronger and won’t crack, and we have never had a problem since,” Captain Steve affirmed in his video.
