Between the training required for a solo parachute jump, and the cost (and more importantly) weight of the equipment, plus the relative safety of commercial flights, it’s simply not justified.
In more than a few cases we’ve seen airliners make emergency landings that are gnarly, but the majority survive. In more cases than I can count, there’s checks and balances that ground flights because of safety concerns either at the departure point or at the destination (icing, high winds, etc), or due to mechanical concerns.
It’s rare that a fully inspected and functional aeroplane will fall out of the sky, and we do everything in our power to ensure that all planes that leave the ground are fully inspected and functional. Short of a freak occurrence, like a fast forming weather phenomenon, there’s so many checks and balances that airliner crashes are exceedingly rare.
So not only is a crash rare, there’s no guarantee that a crash will be fatal, usually the pilot can at least get the plane on the ground without killing everyone aboard, and the fact that it’s a massive amount of extra weight that requires training that the average person doesn’t have, there’s little point and nearly nothing to gain from doing something like that, while it would have significant downsides on flight efficiency and increase the costs of fuel per flight due to the extra weight.
Then there’s the consideration of, even if they were able to successfully parachute to the ground, what then? It’s pretty much a guarantee that nobody has a radio, and that you’re far enough away from civilization that your cellphone doesn’t work, so now you have hundreds of people spread out over potentially thousands of miles of terrain/water/whatever that you now need weeks to search and rescue everyone. Taking weeks on search and rescue, pretty much guarantees that you’ll find people who landed safely, then died from exposure to the environment.
On the flip side, if everyone is in the plane when it crashes then all you need to do is find the plane; everyone will be in that general area, whether alive or dead.
There’s just too many downsides to having parachutes on board to make it feasible.
Honestly, I do understand that ejector seats are not a good idea, but I was thinking something more like this. It’s more like a lifeboat and would be equipped as such to address the same sort of concerns a disaster at sea would require to allow folks to survive and be tracked.
I get that the expense and weight appear prohibitive, but it’s insane to me that we put people 30,000 feet in the air with no plan other than prevention and measures that don’t completely address all dangers.
I know nothing will likely ever be done in this vein, and probably rightfully so, but it sure feels like airlines are the ultimate “you pays your money and you takes your chance” experience. Given my own limited experience with flying, it increasingly scares the hell out of me personally. I didn’t have occasion to fly until I was in late middle age, and I found the experience thoroughly terrifying.
Not a stupid question.
Between the training required for a solo parachute jump, and the cost (and more importantly) weight of the equipment, plus the relative safety of commercial flights, it’s simply not justified.
In more than a few cases we’ve seen airliners make emergency landings that are gnarly, but the majority survive. In more cases than I can count, there’s checks and balances that ground flights because of safety concerns either at the departure point or at the destination (icing, high winds, etc), or due to mechanical concerns.
It’s rare that a fully inspected and functional aeroplane will fall out of the sky, and we do everything in our power to ensure that all planes that leave the ground are fully inspected and functional. Short of a freak occurrence, like a fast forming weather phenomenon, there’s so many checks and balances that airliner crashes are exceedingly rare.
So not only is a crash rare, there’s no guarantee that a crash will be fatal, usually the pilot can at least get the plane on the ground without killing everyone aboard, and the fact that it’s a massive amount of extra weight that requires training that the average person doesn’t have, there’s little point and nearly nothing to gain from doing something like that, while it would have significant downsides on flight efficiency and increase the costs of fuel per flight due to the extra weight.
Then there’s the consideration of, even if they were able to successfully parachute to the ground, what then? It’s pretty much a guarantee that nobody has a radio, and that you’re far enough away from civilization that your cellphone doesn’t work, so now you have hundreds of people spread out over potentially thousands of miles of terrain/water/whatever that you now need weeks to search and rescue everyone. Taking weeks on search and rescue, pretty much guarantees that you’ll find people who landed safely, then died from exposure to the environment.
On the flip side, if everyone is in the plane when it crashes then all you need to do is find the plane; everyone will be in that general area, whether alive or dead.
There’s just too many downsides to having parachutes on board to make it feasible.
Damn. That was thorough.
Honestly, I do understand that ejector seats are not a good idea, but I was thinking something more like this. It’s more like a lifeboat and would be equipped as such to address the same sort of concerns a disaster at sea would require to allow folks to survive and be tracked.
I get that the expense and weight appear prohibitive, but it’s insane to me that we put people 30,000 feet in the air with no plan other than prevention and measures that don’t completely address all dangers.
I know nothing will likely ever be done in this vein, and probably rightfully so, but it sure feels like airlines are the ultimate “you pays your money and you takes your chance” experience. Given my own limited experience with flying, it increasingly scares the hell out of me personally. I didn’t have occasion to fly until I was in late middle age, and I found the experience thoroughly terrifying.