Putting parachutes beneath the seats of a commercial aircraft is a good idea,NO?

Question

In worst case scenarios,specially designed parachutes can save lives,were they,are they or do they plan to look into the possibility?

If Not,then whats the logic?

Answer 1

First off, the vast majority of accidents happen at take off or landing, where a parachute is useless. there is not enough altitude or time to use a parachute.

Take it from someone that jumps out of planes for fun. There is not enough room to put on a parachute in a commercial plane. Everyone would have to wear the rigs before getting on the aircraft. Even if everyone had a parachute there is no safe way to exit the aircraft. You would need special equipment and training to survive the 560 + mph winds and 30,000 foot plus altitudes. Without extra oxygen and protective gear you would die in that environment. The fastest skydiving jumps are at 150 knots, not 500 + knots and are made from 18,000 feet MSL or lower. Just getting out of the airplane could kill you as you'd be slammed into the door on exit. The next issue would be landing a parachute. Most likely this case would use rounds and you'd just have to do a parachute landing fall. That is easy enough to learn. The steering of the canopy would require training. I'd say that about 25% of the people on any flight are not healthy enough to survive a normal skydive. The very young, old, and anyone not in good health would have no chance at surviving the exit, parachute flight or landing.

As a skydiver we know that at some point we will have to exit our aircraft during an aircraft emergency, it doesn’t happen very often, almost never, but it does.  But here is the catch, you need time and altitude to open up the parachute.  We wear seat belts in the plane for taxi, take off, and if needed landing.  If there is a problem with the aircraft under 1000 feet above the ground you go down with the plane.  In a commercial flight you will climb past 1000 feet very quickly but there will not be enough time to put on a parachute system, nor enough time to get everyone out of the plane.  The vast majority of the very rare commercial accidents happen right after take off or on landing…. A parachute would be useless.

For more information about traveling with a parachute you can check out www.uspa.org and there is a link to the TSA rules about traveling with rigs.

In the big picture. commercial airline flights are very safe and not something to worry about.  I travel for a living.  Taking two or more flights a week across the US.  I hate landing in planes because I’d rather be jumping out and landing my parachute, but it is impossible to do that safely from a commercial aircraft; never mind the less than legal part of it.

As for flotation devises, I don’t know about you, but when I get into water all I do is prolong my drowning.  I’m very glad there is something there to help me float if needed.  The parachutes are pointless, the flotation device, might of might not be useful, but I like having the piece of mind.  Perhaps having a parachute on the plane would give piece of mind, even if it couldn’t be used.

Answer 2

if the plane is not a jet plane then OK it might be of some help . if its a jet then better of forgetting it.

Answer 3

it would be pointless, there are about only 1 commercial crash every  1-3 years.  If a plane is going toward the ground, you would have to be trained to jump out.

Answer 4

Won't be done.

1. Loss of pressurization (plane breaking up or opening a door on a commercial aircraft) at high altitude will cause you to lose consciousness in less than a minute.

2. You can't jump from a plane traveling that fast. You'd be smashed into the fuselage.

3. Most door exits are in front of the jet engines.

4. Most airliner accidents happen quickly and close to the ground so you would never have time to escape.

5.  Can you imagine the chaos of 200+ people trying to escape through 6 doors while a plane is in a inverted dive at 450 mph?

Answer 5

No.

Imagine trying to get a plane load of people out of a falling airplane (look how long it takes to empty once a plane gets to the terminal).

A VERY small percentage of people would know how to use one.

Answer 6

Definitely not a good idea. If you worked on the plane, would you want a bunch of idiots playing with parachutes? I think not, as you would have to repack them after the flight. Plus, a parachute can be dangerous with no training.

Answer 7

Other answers are right on. The vast majority of aircraft accidents take place during take-off, landing, and the climb out phase of flight. These are times where there would just not be sufficient altitude or time for people to start jumping, even if they are wearing the parachutes from the start. The only really workable way to have an individual escape system from an aircraft is to give every passenger their own ejection seat. Which, as I'm sure you'd realize, is completely infeasible in it's own right. Even if they wanted to do it, the weight, space, and maintenance of the seats would drastically reduce the passenger load and raise operation costs to the point of non-profitability.

Answer 8

People don't even listen to the lecture about seat belts.

If the plane is in good enough condition that you could put on a parachute and get out OK, then it's also in good enough condition to land, even if it's a controlled crash.

Answer 9

Yes, all those reasons and more why it is a bad, rather than a good, idea.

Answer 10

d**k and CMorris are correct. I can think of the following reasons why it would be a bad idea:

1. Parachute training is not simple. Those that do not train would be subject to injury during descent / landing. Injury is preferable to death, but it opens a whole new liability opportunity for the lawyers.

2. It is not easy to get into a parachute. In B-52s, we sat on our parachutes as a backrest, because we wore them all the time. They are not comfortable. In order to be effective, all the passengers would have to wear them all the time. Most of them would not get the parachute on properly - resulting in injury or death, or they might not even get them on before the flight was over.

3. There are no parachutes that would work for infants or the very old/ handicapped. Leave them behind?

4. If someone accidentally triggered his chute during normal flight or prematurely during an emergency, you would have a mess on your hands that would prevent the emergency exit of most of the other passengers.

5. Most military aircraft have ejection seats that work in combination with the chute to make sure that you clear the aircraft. I suspect that without these, less than half the passengers would get out of the aircraft, and less than half of those would clear the engines / tail / wings. If you started bailing folks out, you would lose most of them due to the bailout process.

6. Without ejection seats, the bailout would have to be initiated at altitude - probably above 10,000 feet - to get the people up and out and get their chutes to open before hitting the ground. This eliminates all accidents occurring during takeoff, landing, final approach, visual pattern, low altitude weather conditions, etc where all of the issues occur in the first place.

The bottom line is, if you build redundancy into the aircraft, then you are safer staying with the aircraft. If you encounter a situation that still absolutely requires leaving the aircraft, then there is no way that most of the passengers will get out safely, anyway. The reason that military aircraft have ejection systems / parachutes is that they are being shot at on a regular basis or they are doing things like jet training that are inherently hazardous to begin with. It may seem like a good idea, but it really doesn't make sense for passenger aircraft.

Answer 11

Im suprised, aside from the other good answers, it that no one mentioned the parachute themselves.  Each chute has to be packed by a Master rigger and inspected. This takes alot of time and skilled people trained in the art of packing chutes.

The cost of maintaing a fleet of aircraft with a parachute under each seat would be enourmous.  Imangine sitting in a crowded aircraft, and being delayed for 3 hours because some kid pulled the handle, and pulled the chute out of the bag. Now the airline would have to scurry around to find another chute, because the passenger would be required to have one if it was required equipment, and none were to be had, and had to wait until the master rigger came into work..

See the money and problems this would cause?

A parachute would only work if used properly. In a jet aircraft, the chances of bailing out of an aircraft doing in excess of 450mph, the forces on the body would be enough to break almost every bone, and kill a person. Another thing is that on the majority of commerical airlines, at least two of the emergency exits are ahead of the wing, and the engines are below the wing, if a person did somehow manage to jump out, the chances of ending in up in the intake of the engine is quite high.

Although aircrafts do crash, the rareity and scarity of this actually happening does not justify the costs involved, Benefit cost analysis, thats why the FAA required RVSM for all aicraft above FL24, as the benefity outweighted the cost..

Aside .. as a contray, there has been one successful parachute jump from a commercial aircraft, and that was done by DB  Cooper, but it was from a B727 with the rear door, and he instructed the pilots to level off at 10000msl and slow to 200.

Answer 12

No...cus of the weight involved, which makes the aircraft heavier, which in turn creates drag which in turn burns more fuel. Good idea but not viable...

Answer 13

Most people don't even realize when the plane is going down so parachutes, no. If the pilot is able to land chances are you will be fine. If not, chance we take, I guess.

Answer 14

not enough time to drop all the passengers.

some would not be willing to bailout and would block the door

some would not be able to fit the size - babies, elders

some would not survive the parachute landing.

and they would be spread all over the landscape, which would take moths to collect them.

notice the paratroopers are considered elite warriors for a reason.

I would show the calculation of the distribution area of untrained paradropped personell from a B747 class aircraft, but you wont listen anyway.

in one sentence: if the plane is fit for straight and level flight to drop all the passengers, then it is fit enough to perform an emergency landing.

btw. have you ever tried sitting on a packed parachute for three hours or so? it is awesome :) my butt could tell...