Parachutes for airplanes

Would it be impossible to have parachutes for airliners. In a fall they normally go nose down. It there were parachutes in the tail section there could be a chance of slowing the descent of the plane.

It would be possible, but why? Most airliners don’t crash. There is a new airplane on the market that comes with a ballistic parachute. The plane will likely be destroyed, but the passengers will likely survive. But it’s a small plane.

The problem with putting a parachute in a large aircraft is that it would have to be massive. It would just be too heavy and space-consuming for the airliner to carry enough people to pay for itself.

Putting a parachute in the tail has its own problems. The people up front will be crushed my the many tons of aluminum crunching down on them. The parachute would have to be near the CG so that the aircraft would descend in a horizontal attitude. Also, the APU is usually in the tail.

But as I said at the start, not very many aircraft crash. That’s why they’re on the news when they do. Cars crash all the time, so the news doesn’t report on every one that does. Aircraft are very safe.

Of course, that should read “by the many tons…”

Yes it’s possible. But a buddy of mine who used to work as director of security for a well known major airline once told me …"You know with all the thousands of flights daily on our airline alone, it’s still cheaper to pay millions of dollars per head, if and when, a plane plows into a mountain side!
Also what would happen in the industry the first time one of these chutes “accidentally deployed” while the plane was cruising normally at +600 mph?

This question was asked on one of those aviation documentaries on the Discovery channel. In addition to all the comments in the above posts the main one is weight and size. A parachute large enough for a 747 would have to be the size of about 7 football fields, so you can see that it would be all but impossible.

As Johnny L.A. pointed out, airliners are very safe but even in those cases where they do crash, a parachute would not have helped in the vast majority of cases. Think about TWA flight 800 (sudden catastrophic explosion) or Swiss Air Flight 111 (in flight fire) as good examples. In fact, parachutes would not help at all in any of the most common causes of plane crashes:

  1. Low altitude take off or landing accident
  2. In flight fire
  3. Terrain collision
  4. Runway collision between two aircraft

For what it’s worth, many varieties of ultralight airplane (so I’ve heard) have a single parachute for the plane, rather than for the pilot. Again, there’s a world of difference between making a 'chute for a moterized hang glider and a 747

That’s a pretty unfair comparision, first off I’ve been in many auto-crashes and am still kicking. The media picks on sensationalism, car-crashes that end with death are often on the news, as with airplanes.

What’s scary about airlines is that when accidents do happen the result isn’t some bodywork, its a countryside scattered with corpses.

People instictivly want extreme proctections for extreme outcomes like air-travel related deaths. Yes, planes are very safe but why not safer, its a money vs. lives equation. Why not have each row of seats fire off like an ejection capsule or frequent replacement of older planes. Its simply not worth it as it would raise prices and without a restructering of the business model the industry would collapse under the weight of high-priced safety gear to save a couple hundred people a year.

What it comes down to is you take your chances and your chances are good, but don’t expect any major changes in plane safety engineering anytime soon. I’ll just wait for the Jetson’s anti-gravity belt.

While airline crashes can and do result in 100% fatalities, most accidents are not of that sort. I’d have to look up the figures, but I’m pretty sure that less than half of all aircraft crashes (including airlines, military and general aviation aircraft) result in fatalities. Media usually report on incidents where the aircraft is undamaged and the pilot is uninjured; not just the fatal ones. I still say they report on them because they don’t happen very often, and are therefore “news”.

Part of the reason there aren’t “ejection rows” (in addition to the cost that you mentioned, and the weight) is that people simply aren’t trained for emergency egress. Also, they would probably fire out of the side. The sideways forces on the human body would be severe. Then there’s the likelihood of collisions between the rows (military aircraft often have the front-seater go one way and the rear-seater, the other). Finally, people don’t understand simple things like turbulence. They are often out of their seats when the seat belt sign is lit. Still, it’d be a pretty good visual for a movie…

Such is life.

Um, that’s not quite true. Airplanes are safer per passenger mile than cars, but that is because they tend to travel many miles in one trip – take off and landing being the most dangerous parts of the voyage. If you fly frequently, you are greatly reducing your life expectancy. Small planes actually do crash 3 or 4 of them per day in the US alone – but unless it’s some rich senator’s cousin or patrick Swayze, you only here about it on the local news. Cars do crash all the time, but fatalities are rare. When planes crash, survival is just as rare.

The following comes from the 1998 Nall Report http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/99nall.html
It covers only those aircraft weighing less than 12,500 pounds, which are “General Aviation” aircraft. Large aircraft tend to crash less frequently than small aircraft. (Note, these might actually be in the Member section.)

Given 1,642 total accidents, of which 331 were fatal, about 20% of the accidents were fatal and 80% were not.

This next quote is excerpted from the April 1996 Safety Pilot column in AOPA’s Pilot magazine:

Finally, this comes from http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/stats/fctcrd11.html U.S. Civil Aviation Accident Data (As Reported by NTSB on 2/24/98)
_________________total%
Total Accidents_______2,006___100.0
General Aviation______1,858____92.6
Air Carrier*____________148_____7.4

Total Fatal Accidents___384___100.0
General Aviation________356____92.7
Air Carrier*_____________28_____7.3

Total Fatalities________753___100.0
General Aviation________660____87.6
Air Carrier*_____________93____12.4

______________________Total___Fatal
__________________Accidents___Accidents
Rate per 100,000
Hours Flown**__________4.33____0.83
General Aviation_______7.29____1.40
Air Carrier*___________0.78____0.15

Rate per 100,000
Departures***__________3.77____0.71
General Aviation_______4.72____0.90
Air Carrier*___________0.56____0.02

  • Includes air carrier (scheduled and unscheduled), commuter, and air taxi accident data.
    ** Based on NTSB estimated data (25.473 million hours flown by general aviation operators and 19.062 million hours flown by the Part 121 scheduled/ nonscheduled and Part 135 scheduled/ nonscheduled airlines).
    *** Based on FAA (39.400 million general aviation departures) and NTSB estimated data (11.695 million departures by Part 121 scheduled/ nonscheduled and Part 135 scheduled air carriers).

So going by these 1996 numbers there were 2,006 total crashes of which 384 were fatal. About 19% of the crashes were fatal.

Oh, “rate per 100,000” means the rate per 100,000 hours flown.

I retract my last statement. Usually, accidents are given in terms of 100,000 flying hours. Having re-read the chart, it looks like there were 4.33 accidents (of which 0.83 were fatal) per 100,000 hours flown, and 3.77 accidents (of which 0.71 were fatal) per 100,000 departures. If I’m wrong, I will stand corrected.