- Passengers airplane often fly too high and too fast to safely parachute from
- Passengers need to be trained to parachute
- Planes rarely crash
- If every psycho and their dog knew there was a parachute onboard for them it would happen often that some drunk asshole decided today was they day they’re gonna jump from a commercial flight
No it’d be some Karen who got scared by turbulence trying to jump after convincing half the plane that she knew they were going to crash because of it. The same type of “do your own research” crowd that convinced half the population that COVID was a hoax because they know better!
- It would take a lot of time to have 150 persons jump and people go crazy even when the plane safely lands, just to go off board
- (Or maybe addendum to 1. Or 3.) Most complications in flights occur near takeoff and landing. These are altitudes not conducive for parachutes.
Jupp, fair reasons those
That question got me thinking: In which major disaster would there have been time to get people off board and deploy parachutes? Any major disaster I can think of happened so fast or unbeknownst to anyone on board, or in unfavorable conditions for parachutes, i.e. takeoff or landing.
The only one coming to mind is the Gimli glider and that turned out fine.
How do you envisage it working in practice? If a plane had a disaster that will make it crash in a matter of minutes, people wouldn’t form an orderly line to jump out with their parachutes. And if the malfunction is not making the plane crash in the next 5 minutes, the plane can probably land safely at the nearest airport.
So another reason is that first class passengers would be at the back of the queue? [ * for the ramp at the back when parachuting]
Not necessarily. I’ve flown on many flights where the first class has its own door at the front of the plane, and the lower classes have their entrances further down the fuselage, so that the first class isn’t bother by the boarding plebs. I fly pleb class btw.
I don’t think you can parachute from the front door (which would also put you in front of the engines) - the only airliner stairs to open in flight were at the back.
Haha that is such a good point!
I’ve seen a concept of an airplane that can eject sections of it’s hull, each equipped with a large parachute. This can solve the problem of “how to put parachutes on each passenger including kids, disabled and panicked and teach them how to use it”. Also it doesn’t require the plane to maintain certain height, speed or angle for parachuting.
But of course it will add extra weight to carry, because not only they’ll need to install big parachutes, but also ejection system and something to seal off ejectable sections.
I literally thought about this on my flight a couple weeks ago, if the plane loses power in the air most people in the plane are just gonna go down with it. I imagine most if not all passengers have no idea how to properly operate a parachute.
Some chance would be better than none right? Don’t they have parachutes that automatically deploy at a specific height?
At what cost though? Like a single parachute without an automatic release system costs hundreds, if not thousands. You multiply that by 150 and it’s infeasible. Now include an automatic deployment system, and we’re talking tens of thousands per unit. Not including maintenance and repairs, long-term storage costs, the added weight on the plane. All these costs would be added to passenger tickets at a markup, so that $450 flight across the country is now a $700 flight. The risk also still remains because of depressurization issues, even if you make it to the surface your blood might boil in your body and still cause you to pass.
Logistically, plane accidents that result in loss of life are so rare that it would make more sense to equip every car in production with ejector seats then it would to equip every plane seat with automated parachutes.
Because imagine trying to, not only, put your own on. But then getting your kids into them…
Or parachutes for the plane itself?
It works for the Cirrus because that plane is tiny. A parachute big enough to safely land a commercial jet is not feasible.
If a commercial plane has a failure, say an engine failure as in the news story, the pilots with fly the plane with the other engine to a safe landing.
If the Cirrus has an engine failure it becomes a glider. If there’s no airports nearby you’ll have to ditch in a field somewhere. There is a lot less redundancy in general aviation.
If you’re a new pilot buying your first plane, having a parachute on the plane is a nice feature.
If a comercial plane has both engines fail and can’t be restarted, it also turnes into a glider, a small wind turbine will deploy and power basic instruments and controls, check this out:
There’s no peer reviewed evidence that parachutes work https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a medical intervention justified by observational data must be in want of verification through a randomised controlled trial.
This was a great read. Thanks.
I’m a licensed skydiver and the planes we jump out of go about 80 mph. Passenger airplanes go MUCH faster and higher than that and the wind speed alone would rip yer skin off.
also skydiving isn’t exactly something that typical commercial airline passengers would ever be interested in doing. If you’re not properly trained, you’re gonna have a bad time.
You’re not counting children and babies, how will they go out? and besides all the passengers will have to be wearing the parachutes during the flight.
In addition to what others said about weight, training, the logistics of moving that many people at once, and other common sense problems; the most times (~80%) something goes wrong with airplanes is during takeoff or landing where you couldn’t feasably safely jump out of the plane anyway reducing their effectiveness even further.
Actually a good idea I think
