Originally Posted by
MikeB525
The goal of an emergency decent is to get down to 10,000 feet. Question: what do you do when flying over, say, the Rocky Mountains???
Your goal is 10,000 feet or the minimum enroute altitude (MEA) whichever is higher. In the Rockies it's about 15,000. Some places in Tibet it's 30,000 plus. The possibility that you may not be able to descend right away is the main reason for masks in the passenger cabin. Some people will survive while breathing at 20,000 plus feet, but nobody survives smacking a mountain.
Carl