Even if you’ve never taken a plane ride, you’ve surely noticed that all airplane windows are round. But contrary to popular belief, these windows are not round for purely aesthetic reasons. The reason airplane windows are round is the product of life-saving engineering.
It’s pretty hard to imagine planes with square windows these days – but that’s exactly what they once had. Until the 1950s, commercial airplanes had square windows.
However, it turned out that planes with square windows are slower and fly at lower altitudes. As air travel became more popular and flight altitudes were increased to reduce costs, more and more pressure had to be put on airplanes.
Aircraft windows used to be square, but when this proved to compromise safety, they switched to round (oval) windows.Unfortunately, the square windows were a crucial engineering mistake. Due to the structure of the windows, even plane crashes could and did happen. Square windows with sharp corners naturally caused problems at altitudes where stress intensified and gradually weakened by air pressure. Because this pressure was affecting all four corners and eventually it would cause a disaster.
Round windows also appeared from this moment. Engineers turned square windows into oval windows to allow stress to flow smoothly so we could fly safely.
Oval windows not only dissipate this stress, but also reduce the chance of cracks and breakage. In addition, circular shapes are more resistant to deformation and can withstand extremely different air pressure values inside and outside the aircraft.
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