Parachutes require pretty specific conditions to be able to use, and they require a fair amount of know-how. Expecting random passengers to be able to operate a parachute at all is basically a losing battle, and if you had people jumping out of planes that were on their way down, you'd have a lot more people dying (speculation but I'd wager money on it) than if they just stayed in the plane. Plus it'd be a horrible look for the airline - even worse than a plane crashing and killing everyone on it - if they had dead people raining down over cities and whatnot because they jumped and didn't properly deploy their chute, or deployed it too quickly, or didn't jump at the right time and got hit by the plane or any number of other possible problems.
Fighter jets and the like have ejection seats that specifically propel the pilot away from the plane before deploying the chute, and recreational (or military) planes that people are jumping from are designed for that purpose, and are moving a lot slower than commercial airliners. Opening the door on a plane to let people jump would cause more problems than keeping them on the plane. (People getting sucked out the door and the like.) Getting passengers safely clear of a plane that's going down unrecoverably would be basically impossible.
Commercial airlines also fly really high up. If you were ejected at cruising altitude, the first thing you would do is pass out and fall for a few minutes. Hopefully you wake up in time to orient yourself and activate a parachute.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Piantanida
This guy was in a remote controlled, parachute equipped gondola at 17km altitude wearing a pressurized suite. His suit broke and even though the emergency descent of the gondola was immediately activated to descend safely, he later died from embolism (bubbles forming in the blood because of rapidly decreasing pressure). Passenger jets cruise at about 11km so i gather it would be similar.
Wtf, Felix Baumgartner's Jump was over 12 years ago in 2012? That can't be right, what wibbly wobbly time fuckery is this?? 😵💫
Ah, yeah this makes total sense actually. Thanks for the insight!
Plus a lot of flights are above ocean or rough terrain a lot of the time, limiting the possibilities even more.
- 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!
Jupp, fair reasons those
- To jump out, they would need to open the doors. There would be problems with decompression at above 10K.
- You have to deal with people unable to use parachutes. Children, elderly, disabled, afraid of heights, and panicked.
- There's an assumption an airplane remains level enough. If it's spinning or nose down, trying to reach an exit is another problem.
- If jumping out ahead of the wing, there's a risk of getting sucked into the engines.
- Parqchutes are bulky. Trying to get them out of storage and distribute them to a couple hundred untrained people is a tall order.
- Putting on a parachute, correclty strapping it, knowing when and where to pull the cord, and knowing how to land without breaking bones, hitting tree branches, or ditching into water. These are all issues you can't teach during preflight safety instruction.
Overall, everyone would be better off staying put, not panicking, and hoping a plane and trained pilots can get everyone on the ground, safely.
If a plane can stay level enough for long enough to get people into parachute gear and out the door, chances are good that the pilots can land that plane, which significantly decreases the chances of injury to the passengers.
Building them into the seats makes about all those problems go away. But decreases the amount of seats you can fit on plane and amount of money made per flight and therefore is never going to happen
So, some kind of detachable roof that doesn't randomly detach when it shouldn't? This also doesn't solve the speed, air pressure, and cold problems for the people in the seats.
You have to check them before every flight though.
Half as interesting just did a video on this
Short answers from the video: (but its a good video if you have the time)
- They weigh a huge amount and take up a lot of space, so carrying them on every flight would be crazy expensive for extra fuel cost and reduce other baggage cargo that could be carried.
- Current day passengers have difficulty just putting and keeping a simple seat belt on. Properly putting on a parachute, especially in the small space you have in an airliner, and successfully deploying it outside are beyond what airline passengers are capable of doing.
- Passenger jets fly too high and too fast to survive jumping out of one at cursing altitude. Even if you successfully put on the parachute, got out of the plane without being sucking into an engine or hitting a control surface at 400MPH, you would quickly suffocate from lack of oxygen and/or freeze to death from the sub zero temperatures at that altitude.
I like your point #3 the most. We're at #$!@ 30,000 feet, you bastards!
Also just being realistic those parachute are probably just going to be questionable bargin bulk buys. They'd be designed to be as cheap as possible while just barely passing legal standards. They never be maintained or inspected. And there's no way they support my 6'5" 300lbs ass as my frozen corps plummets to the earth below.
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.
There's been tons of slow moving air disasters where there would have been time to suit up and jump from a safe altitude. Lots of electrical fires, jammed cables and shoddy repairs over the years.
Come on. When you have companies like Boeing unwilling to even build a plane right, you'd actually expect them to add parachutes and not cheap out on them?
Let's be serious here.pulls rip cord
Pots, pans and other kitchen utensils cartoonishly fly out
Step 3 hold tight to the puke bag before jumping
Your tone is inappropriate for nostupidquestions
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]
"okay everyone, stand up calmly and put on your parachute while the plane falls out of the sky.. once everyone is done with that, and all parachutes are secure, we will begin an orderly de-boarding.. thank you for your attention - while the plane falls out of the sky for some reason.."
People can barely get off or on a stationary plane in an orderly fashion.
There would be people climbing over one another and seats, people getting trampled, Stooging at the doors, people getting knocked out of the door without a parachute, and people falling to their death because they didn't put the parachute on right or they exceeded the weight limits of the equipment due to their American figure.
Right, the question definitely sounds incredible silly when you put it like that haha, but fair point. Was more thinking it would be better that some survived than none, but indeed: on a full passanger airplane this would probably never work out.
maybe you could pack a chute inside each seat, and then just dump all the seats out with everyone still in them.. chutes deploy automatically.. like a pilot's seat in a jet fighter, but less complicated..
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.
Ejectable doors are already a feature for Boeing airplanes.
Cuz based on the type of accidents, it probably wouldn't make sense. It is just adding extra cost.
Instead of a regular backpack can I just bring a parachute as my carryon?
Yes. TSA has special screening procedures for parachutes.
I want to rent one of those airport mall storefronts and sell parachutes to 737 max customers.
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.
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:
It's worth noting that all commercial aircraft that operate over water (so, the vast majority, excepting very small commercial aircraft and four-engine behemoths) have ETOPS ratings. [ETOPS, Extended-range Twin-engine Operations Performance Standards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS#:~:text=ETOPS%20(%2Fi%CB%90%CB%88t%C9%92,%2Dengine%2Dinoperative%20flight%20conditions.) specifies the amount of time the aircraft can operate on a single engine, measured in minutes. ETOPS-180 is a pretty common rating.
Because imagine trying to, not only, put your own on. But then getting your kids into them...
Found Captain Kirk's account.
Weight. Chutes are heavy and means more fuel use and less range with less people. Which means more flights, which means more planes, crew, maintenance, parts, landing fees etc.
It would be easier to strap a large parachute to the plane which has been done on small aircraft
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.
There's no peer reviewed evidence that parachutes work https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/
In other words (and more neutrally), there have not been any randomized controlled trials of parachute intervention, so we do not have data to say whether they would work or not.
Imagine being part of that experiment.
“Here’s your parachute. Hope you aren’t part of the control group!”
This is satirizing the view of people who feel observational studies - studies in which everyone is treated with the experimental medicine and the response of the entire group is evaluated - aren't clear enough or rigorous enough to prove that a drug works. True, these studies sometimes lack the clarity of a perfect randomized double-blind study, but as we see with the parachute, sometimes the results are pretty clear anyway. And in a life-or-death situation, no one wants to take the chance on a placebo. In other words, the "advocates of evidence based medicine" are being "challenged" with a little sarcasm. Inglis-Arkell 2014
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.
People don't want to wear a facemask. Imagine a parachute. We are truly garbage.
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.
I SAW A VIDEO ABOUT THIS 20 MINUTES AGO
Actually a good idea I think
