We present the design of an air hole microstructured photonic crystal fiber for pressure sensing applications. The air-hole photonic crystal lattices were designed to produce a large intrinsic birefringence of 1.16 x 10(-3). The impact of the surrounding air holes for pressure sensing to the propagation mode profiles and indices were studied and improved, which ensures single mode propagation in the fiber core defined by the photonic crystal lattice. An air hole matrix and a practical chemical etching process during the fiber perform preparation stage is proposed to produce an optical fiber with a birefringence-pressure coefficient of 43.89 x 10 (-6)MPa(-1) or a fiber Bragg grating pressure responsivity of 44.15 pm/MPa, which is a 17 times improvement over previous photonic crystal fiber designs.