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Are cargo holds pressurised these days, what is the situation?


Related questions:

  • Are cargo holds heated?



  • and what about Fedex-type cargo-only aircraft?




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up vote 35 down vote accepted



A380 Fuselage Cross Section


The floor of the passenger cabin is not designed to withstand that pressure, because the flat surface would need to be much heavier to do so. Decompression events are considered by regulations though, so there are vents that allow the pressure to equalize. In older aircraft without these vents, a decompression event can cause the floor of the cabin to collapse, as in this incident (and because it wasn't addressed, this one too).

Are cargo holds heated?


Although the air outside the plane is cold, the walls are insulated (also for fire protection), and being pressurized along with the cabin helps too. Even in unheated cargo holds, the temperature should be above freezing. For example, the cargo bay of a 767 stays above 7˚C but with heat stays above 18˚C.


They do have lights, mainly for ground crew during loading and unloading. See this Boeing page about fire protection where it mentions that "another safety feature on many newer airplane models prevents the cargo lights from operating in flight".

and what about Fedex-type cargo-only aircraft?



The rare exception would be aircraft like the 747 LCF (Dreamlifter). The cargo section is not pressurized, and there is a bulkhead behind the flight deck section.

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@PeterKämpf Is the requirement to withstand those loads indefinitely or just very briefly until the passenger cabin also vents? I thought the DC-10's solution to the floor collapse problem was mostly just to install vents in the floors so that if the cargo hold depressurized, the passenger cabin would depressurize before the floor blew out. – reirab Dec 22 '15 at 17:20
@reirab that is what I was trying to address with my recent edit. – fooot Dec 22 '15 at 17:21

Logically speaking, all cargo holds must be pressurized unless the aircraft flies below 10,000 feet or the type of cargo is restricted to no liquids, and no pressurized liquids like aftershaves, shampoos, medicines etc.

At higher altitudes the atmospheric pressure drops and if the cargo hold was unpressurized, all such bottles would burst causing possible damage to the cargo and/or aircraft.

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