Speaking of parachutes... why do you get a life-jacket on a plane?

Richy

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How about the a mechanism separates the forward, mid and rear sections of the aircraft (just like Soyuz) and have parachutes on those? Or what about Vostok style?

I already heard that idea before on an other forum. But would you really like to board a plane, which was designed to blow apart. Maybe your sitting next to some pyrotechnics. To make all the separated sections stable, you have to reinforce the structure and include some break off points. But still, what happens, when this system (or maybe just part of it, image lightning strike) is triggered while taking off, or landing?

Why adding an other dangerous complex system to an already complex system, trying to increase safety? Why not just investing this effort to improve the already available systems to an even higher level? Hey, the only vehicle thats safer than planes is an elevator!
 

Chub777

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I already heard that idea before on an other forum. But would you really like to board a plane, which was designed to blow apart. Maybe your sitting next to some pyrotechnics. To make all the separated sections stable, you have to reinforce the structure and include some break off points. But still, what happens, when this system (or maybe just part of it, image lightning strike) is triggered while taking off, or landing?

Why adding an other dangerous complex system to an already complex system, trying to increase safety? Why not just investing this effort to improve the already available systems to an even higher level? Hey, the only vehicle thats safer than planes is an elevator!

True. This is also the reason why the Shuttle doesn't have a separating cockpit. Also I don't think you will have enough time to have nearly 200 passengers to put parachutes on and jump out of the plane using only 4 or 6 exits.

I think the current system should stay as-is.
 

FADEC

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I don't think you will have enough time to have nearly 200 passengers to put parachutes on and jump out of the plane using only 4 or 6 exits.

Indeed.

It will take minutes to get them out of the plane because you need a certain distance between each person. And this requires that everybody has put his/her chute already on. If it takes about 5 seconds per passenger, it takes 3 to 4 minutes with 4 or 6 exits. Within this time, a plane can crash 3 to 4 times from flight level 300 and above. It just takes about a minute to crash from such altitudes in case a plane breaks up or is out of control.

And there we have the next issue: to get 200 people out of the plane, the plane needs to be in stationary flight and not in a 60 seconds nose dive or uncontrolled dive until crash after losing control or breaking apart whilst the occupants are losing their consciousness. You need to prepare the passengers, explain them what will happen within the next minutes. But how do you know that the plane will crash in 5 or 10 or 15 minutes from now? Also, a lot of people will refuse to jump in any case because they fear to die anyway. And what does a mother with her little child do for example? There will be a lot of panic. You won't get all of them out, and less than ever within any time before the crash.

Again: 80% of crashes happen before landing / after take off from low altitude within just a few seconds. In most other cases the planes become out of control after fire/smoke/systems issues or break up or collide. The other ones do land safely after engine issues and even after complete loss of power etc.

The entire parachute idea is a complete nonsense. In case a plane is going to crash-land you can do only two things: put your life-jacket on, if you still got enough time to do so, and pray/hope...
 
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ky

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The worlds largest parachute was developed by ATK for the Ares Solid rocket booster recovery.
The-worlds-largest-parachute-floats-in-the.jpg

It is the prototype for a parachute that will be 150 feet in diameter and can safely carry 42,000 pounds.

---------- Post added at 02:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:10 PM ----------

I guess it won't be used now the Constellation program is cancelled.
 
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T.Neo

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Especially when every passenger that walks away injured is a lawsuit waiting to happen?

And every dead passenger's family? Apparently the PR you get from dead people is an acceptable alternative to them not dying? :facepalm:
 

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We all saw people jumping out of the World Trade Centre windows, given an option of a parachute you never used before, or staying in the plane, it is quite clear what the majority of the people would choose.

Just because they'd choose it doesn't necessarily mean it would be the safest course of action.

---------- Post added at 20:00 ---------- Previous post was at 18:05 ----------

Planes, as a rule, usually do not instantly catastrophically fail.

Here are some examples from memory, where a parachute would have saved lives:
Japan Airlines Flight 123 - 520 souls

By the time it was realized that the plane could not be landed safely, the pilots no longer had complete control of the aircraft. This would have increased the difficulty of a mid-air evacuation, if it didn't make it impossible.

Air Canada Flight 797 - 23 souls

The plane *landed safely*, for goodness sake. Nobody died before the doors were opened and a flashover occured. I'm not sure that opening the doors for an in-flight bailout wouldn't have caused the same kind of flashover that opening the doors on the ground did.

Swissair Flight 111 - 229 souls

Maybe. But then again, opening the doors might have fed the fire.

Air France Flight 4590 - 109 souls

Not a chance. There were only two minutes from the start of the takeoff roll to the crash, and for 38 seconds of that, nothing had even gone wrong yet. By the time it was realized that the plane could not be landed safely, there was probably less than a minute of flight left, which might not even have been time for an evacuation under optimal conditions on the ground (the fire would have made that even more problematic, as with Air Canada 797). Furthermore, towards the end of the flight, the plane was rolling uncontrollably, which probably would have made a bailout impossible.
 

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Even though this is purely theoretical, I am amused by the "you can't jump at Mach 0.8 and 10km altitude" responses.

Anyone recall the ditch procedures for space shuttle orbiter? I mean, seriously, why jump out of the plane before it starts going down? Modern airliners have a very good glide ratio so it's possible to get enough time at lower altitude, and lower speed. When the descent is too steep or the flight is uncontrolled, I don't see very good chances at surviving the impact anyway.

I'm not saying there should be parachutes and rear/bottom doors on passenger aircraft. I just thought some of the repeated arguments presented here are rather strange.
 

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Even though this is purely theoretical, I am amused by the "you can't jump at Mach 0.8 and 10km altitude" responses.

Anyone recall the ditch procedures for space shuttle orbiter?

Different conditions.


  1. Astronauts wear pressure suits and use a special curved pole to get free of the Shuttle and below the wing.
  2. Bailout takes place below 30Kft and at 185-195 KEAS at 0° Pitch, which is Mach 0.47-0.5 (Speed of Sound is 385.42 KEAS in 30Kft).
 

Hielor

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Even though this is purely theoretical, I am amused by the "you can't jump at Mach 0.8 and 10km altitude" responses.

Anyone recall the ditch procedures for space shuttle orbiter? I mean, seriously, why jump out of the plane before it starts going down? Modern airliners have a very good glide ratio so it's possible to get enough time at lower altitude, and lower speed. When the descent is too steep or the flight is uncontrolled, I don't see very good chances at surviving the impact anyway.

I'm not saying there should be parachutes and rear/bottom doors on passenger aircraft. I just thought some of the repeated arguments presented here are rather strange.
If the airplane is controllable enough to get into a stable state for parachuting out, it's controllable enough to land.
 

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To attempt to land, perhaps. I can however imagine that landing is much harder than maintaining steady descent. If I happened to have the parachute, associated training and the opportunity to bail, I'd prefer that to seeing through a landing attempt in a forest/non-flat terrain or water with waves.

That makes me wonder how suspicious one would be if they took a parachute on board as personal luggage.
 

Hielor

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To attempt to land, perhaps. I can however imagine that landing is much harder than maintaining steady descent. If I happened to have the parachute, associated training and the opportunity to bail, I'd prefer that to seeing through a landing attempt in a forest/non-flat terrain or water with waves.
Key phrase being "associated training."

The vast majority of people who board commercial flights are not going to be trained parachutists.
 

Linguofreak

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Different conditions.


  1. Astronauts wear pressure suits and use a special curved pole to get free of the Shuttle and below the wing.
  2. Bailout takes place below 30Kft and at 185-195 KEAS at 0° Pitch, which is Mach 0.47-0.5 (Speed of Sound is 385.42 KEAS in 30Kft).

Also, I'm pretty sure that I've heard people debate whether the shuttle bailout procedures would even work should such an event actually happen.
 

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Also, I'm pretty sure that I've heard people debate whether the shuttle bailout procedures would even work should such an event actually happen.

I think it's along the line of RTLS aborts in safety. You don't want to try it, but it's better then ditching. Water landings in the shuttle are not survivable. Belly landings are marginal.
 

Urwumpe

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Also, I'm pretty sure that I've heard people debate whether the shuttle bailout procedures would even work should such an event actually happen.

Physically it is sound, there is no risk of recontact with the wings, opening the parachutes is also automatic, so all problems are just by the pretty high airspeed (Mach 0.5 is pretty fast for parachuting).

The only question left is, is the time long enough if you follow the procedures - I would say yes. But if you can't keep the Shuttle in a stable glide (you need no autopilot there, the CSS would keep the nose at zero pitch automatically) because of hardware failures, the whole concept is pretty flawed. Just a small bank rate or a bit of variance in the AOA and the wing would hit you at almost 100 km/h.
 

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I think the only scenario for the shuttle bailout procedure would be if your engines fail after negative return and before transatlantic abort, so that you can still glide but you're not making it to Saragoza. That happened in Encounter with Tiber by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes and was the reason behind the development of the Apollo Mark II/Pigeon spacecraft.
 
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