Why climbers climbing high mountain peaks need oxygen but airplane passengers flying in high altitude don’t need oxygen?

Question

Why climbers climbing high mountain peaks need oxygen but airplane passengers flying in high altitude don’t need oxygen?

In: 0

Answer 1

Because the cabin is pressurized.

The air on a tall mountain is very low pressure, and that causes hypoxia, or a lack of oxygen. It’s not that high altitudes have less oxygen in comparison to the rest of the air, it’s that there is just less air.

So you can fix that by compressing the air to ~sea level pressure inside the cabin.