Why don't passenger jets have an emergency system to drop passengers out with parachutes?

[Stiler]

This is something that always perplexed me. We have ways to save peoples lives if they fall from a great height, with parachutes.

Yet when a passenger jet goes down, that usually results in everyone dying because outside of somehow landing in an emergency situation you are all but guaranteed to die if the airplane crashes.

Why have they never designed some type of system which could be made so that in an emergency situation that's unrecoverable from they could jettison the passengers with automatic parachutes to safely carry them back to the ground.

Why not use systems we already have learned from airdropping cargo?

The first and the most simple way I could see a system working is to have the bottom of the aircraft underneath where the passengers are have an elevator door system, like the C-124 had (this was back in the 50's even), that could open underneath the aircraft and drop out cargo, here's a picture of those doors opened:

Dropping cargo out of them mid-flight:

Have a way that it would open and then jettison the passenger seats. Group them into columns with large chutes that would deploy once jettisoned out.

Then the other way would be like modern aircraft do it, rear cargo door that opens, have a track system and either use a drogue chute system to pull the seats out the back or some type of automatic tracks that would push the seats back off the the tracks and out the door.

Would none of these be feasible or even work? Seems like something that with enough time/money/engineering there could be some type of design at least to allow for it.

 

[GrimGrinningGuy]

Why doesn’t the plane just have one enormous parachute to float safely to the ground

 

[Avitus]

Because the chances of a plane having damage that lets them safely parachute people out but not land is extremely, extremely low. It's not worth the cost in engineering or additional fuel to carry that weight 24/7, not to mention the costs of maintaining such a limited use system.

Think about the applicability of what you're describing.

Why doesn’t the plane just have one enormous parachute to float safely to the ground

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Smaller private planes do.

 

[shnurgleton]

sounds more expensive than a lawsuit to me

 

[DGenerator]

See y'all in the future 4chan screenshot.

 

[BlackGoku03]

The parachutes would have to be folded before each flight.

They can do it for another 2k on your ticket.

 

[OldSocksAndShoes]

Cost, feasibility, and liability.

 

[Marcus Brutalius]

1. too expensive
2. most accidents happen during take-off and landing

 

[signal]

 

[ElectricBlanketFire]

It is far safer for a trained pilot to attempt saving the passengers and crew vs. your average person flying out of the plane with a parachute in a panic.

 

[Dyle]

It sounds like you've never used a parachute before

 

[sangreal]

aside from other problems, passenger jets are a lot higher and a lot faster than those for skydiving

 

[SwampBastard]

I don't work in the airline industry, but I can only assume that the exorbitant additional cost of doing this (updating the planes, additional maintenance of the chutes, etc) is more expensive than paying families for any liability in the event of an accident given the infrequency of fatal plane crashes (we haven't had a fatal airline crash in the US in over a decade).

 

[hordak]

so you want every chair to have a parachute installed on it. and then somehow enable the bottom of the plane, where the luggage or fuel is, to suddenly disappear, and then have the chairs drop down into the sky at 600mph?

i dont think those seatbelts or those chairs would survive the initial drop but then again I'm no mechanical engineer. plus the cost of this sounds really really expensive. So if you want pay an additional 100-200% for every ticket, sureeeee?

 

[BDS]

Just give everyone a parachute 4head

 

[Deleted member 2761]

I'm just making a guess here, but parachuting from the heights that commerical airliners fly is probably incredibly dangerous.

 

[PanzerKraken]

Would take up ton of extra space on flights reducing amount of seats available on the flight. Huge extra costs involved. Not really guaranteed to work in many situations, people are not cargo. Cargo drop systems work because they are done in controlled environments, as an emergency system, there is not simple way to parachute people out to safety. And people would have to be strapped up entire flight in order for any of these systems to be considered. Even on military craft, only some have an escape option available, in some positions you really have no choice unless you can somehow quickly get a parachute harness on and somehow jump out of a plane, which while your plane is crashing and going down, a person can not easily do. To safely parachute out of a plane you have to be wearing the gear ahead of time or be strapped into an ejection seat securely.

It's a mess that would never work.

 

[Euler007]

Dead weight on every plane flight around the globe. There's about 37.4M plane flights per year, that's a lot of wasted fuel, and a lot of unnecessary pollution.

 

[Deleted member 4372]

In an emergency, I would prefer the seatbelts to lock, disallowing passengers from unbuckling. Then, instead of the bottom of the plane opening, the roof does, and the jet engines underneath every seat are activated.

You are now a WestJet Passenger Drone, or WPD.

 

[Zaryn]

I can picture it now... dozens of terrified people plunging from an airplane. They only half-listened to the attendant explain how to release their shoot should an in-air event occur. Now, they find themselves hurtling towards the earth, and only after screaming in terror, praying to any god who will listen, and asking themselves why the fuck they decided to vacation in Delaware do they realize they can save themselves. By the time they finally release their shoot, it’s too late, and they are now splat on the ground like a bug on a windshield.

Sounds like a great idea!

 

[CHC]

I really have no idea what I'm talking about but a few problems seem obvious:

a) It's too high up (you parachute from ~15,000 feets, many flights go up to 35,000)
b) Many flight zones would be through deadly cold or over open waters
c) It would require a total redesign of the plane and its cargo areas and landing gear
d) Huge bay doors would bring a whole slew of new engineering problems
e) The passengers are very close together and would probably be entangled or collide if dropped simultaneously
f) It would be outrageously terrifying to have happen
g) Many crashes happen when landing or taking off anyway

 

[SJRB]

A plane flies at 35,000 feet and has a cruising speed of like 900 km / hour. The temperature there is -51 degrees celcius.

Good luck jumping out of that with a parachute.

 

[Velocity:Design:Comfort]

90% of the passengers would literally die from the parachuting too, maybe more than in a situation where pilot is able to somewhat mitigate a crash.

 

[hombremalo]

What if you could get a seat with one for only 500 more?

 

[Tater]

Most issues occur during takeoff or landing. At that point, there isn't usually enough height for a parachute to be effective.

Lots of other reasons as well - added weight means that you're increasing cost on every flight, if even there isn't an emergency. Are these steerable parachutes? If not, better hope grandma isn't carried out to sea by the wind. And if the plane is having a problem, is it really going to be able to safely launch all these people to hell^H^H^H^H safety?

 

[Rvaan]

Try to account for the extra weight of the parachute and the space they would take up. Other people have also mentioned this but it would be much worse to let 200 people unfamiliar with how to work a parachute have to figure it out with their life on the line than it would be to let the trained pilot try to salvage the flight.

 

[808s & Villainy]

It sounds like you've never used a parachute before

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This. They aren't just magical air flotation devices that anyone can use.

We have articles about people not properly using the oxygen masks that drop down in airplanes when cabins lose pressure and OP expects people to know how to operate a parachute?!

 

[MikeProtagonist]

You already have most people spacing out during safety instructions. You want to tack on a half hour quick parachuting instruction to that? Also, parachuting is only safe when you know roughly where you're going to land. You can't just jump out at a random location. Like, you're going over the Pacific. The plane going down and sending helicopters to that place is way better than people being spread out over miles. Or you're going over the Gobi desert or Mongolian steppes or the Amazon, suddenly you have 200 people touching down in the middle of nowhere.

 

[painey]

I feel like this is something most children probably wonder, but as they grow up realize it wasn't the smartest idea.

 

[SliceSabre]

Most of the kind of accidents planes seem to have aren't the type where a parachute would save you. Not to mention the effects on someone suddenly tossed out at extreme altitude and speed. Not to mention like what if that happened over open ocean? Now instead of dying in the plane you die in the open ocean because search have a massively huge area to look for you.

 

[Seraphis Cain]

Yeah and why don't they just make the whole plane out of the black box stuff?

 

[Pluto]

I'd love for my row of seats to be dropped into the ocean with me still strapped in.

 

[GodofWine]

What if they just built the plane as strong as they build the black box ;)

 

[Torpedo Vegas]

That would be some dangerous flying around here.

Count to ten and pull the cord.

Aw shit I only learned counting up to 8 since that's how many of them there national championships UK has won in basketball.

 

[Teiresias]

I don't have stats in front of me, but something tells me the majority accidents happen either at takeoff or landing or otherwise at altitudes that wouldn't be safe for parachute use anyway.

If you were to utilize some sort of parachute system on an airliner traveling at cruising altitude you'd be dumping passengers out of a pressurized cabin into air that's anywhere from -40F to -69F. That's not to mention the idea of trying to parachute out of a plane going at an unknown speed in an unknown attitude.

 

[Menelaus]

Why doesn’t the plane just have one enormous parachute to float safely to the ground

Click to shrink...

 

[Dan Thunder]

You know, statistically speaking, flying is still the safest form of transport.

 

[Deleted member 32374]

Way better chance of large, reinforced metal, pressurized mechanical marvel with highly trained pilots (2, each can fly plan), multiple redundant and back up systems attempt to glide to a landing than shoot out untrained passengers.

 

[Squarehard]

 

[D23]

have each seat to have its own engine and floation device

 

[Atomic Playboy]

How are children going to operate these parachutes? Kids over two are required to have their own seat on the aircraft; you think they're capable of operating a parachute? Most adults wouldn't be, given that it requires significant training; they won't let people who are legitimately interested in skydiving go solo on their first run, let alone a bunch of random people on a passenger airline. Unless this is just an elaborate plan to get families to stop flying altogether, I don't see the angle.

 

[IDreamOfHime]

Sounds like an excellent way to make sure all the passengers die instead of trying to save some of them.

 

[ElectricBlanketFire]

This whole thread is like when Toby had to explain to Michael why having the Boy Scouts come to casino night was a bad idea.

 

[Deleted member 29660]

Because they're not under the glorious leadership of Cobra Commander, that's why!

 

[Villein]

Cost

 

[Himynameischris]

Something like this is probably far more feasible

 

[Solace]

 

[KHarvey16]

Cost

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That is pretty far down the list of factors. And even then it’s not simply cost, but the cost relative to the benefit.

 

[830920]

Why don't we just build planes out of a material lighter than air so it can stay up even if it breaks?

 

[RiOrius]

Yeah and why don't they just make the whole plane out of the black box stuff?

Click to shrink...

Black boxes are made of Umbranium, an alloy created in ancient Carthage that we've never been able to reproduce. We barely have enough for the black boxes. Boeing actually has an archeological team excavating more, but they're the limiting factor in airplane production these days.