Stupid question here, I guess, but why isn’t there a system to potentially deliver commercial passengers and crew to the ground in case of a crash? Military jets have ejection seats and parachutes, so why don’t we have at least something required for commercial aircraft in the same vein?
Is it the money that it would undoubtedly require?
Throwing untrained people out of a commercial airliner at high speed in the middle of a emergency is a good way to ensure no one survives. The equipment would add a significant amount of space, fuel and maintenance burden too, and require major compromises to the aircraft design itself. All to resolve a problem that effectively never happens.
I remember seeing an article back in the 90s or maybe even 80s that was exploring the possibility of the entire passenger compartment separating from the wings and rest of the fuselage and parachuting down in the event of a major failure. The thing is, it would be ridiculously expensive to implement, and there are very few situations where such a system would be any better than keeping the plane in one piece.
Yeah, escape pods have been implemented in some aircraft in the past, but the idea has always ended without wide scale adoption for the reasons so many have stated here.
Just carrying a few hundred escape chutes would add significant weight to the plane. Have you ever worn an emergency escape chute? I have. It’s like having a chair strapped to your back and ass.
Some valid answers are already given by other commentators. Just want to highlight that commercial airlines are operating barely cost positive. Every extra bit of cost added has to be at least covered by some other stream of revenue. How much more money can a seat in these crammed airliners make to cover the cost of R&Ding and maintaining additional safety measures?
Stupid question here, I guess, but why isn’t there a system to potentially deliver commercial passengers and crew to the ground in case of a crash? Military jets have ejection seats and parachutes, so why don’t we have at least something required for commercial aircraft in the same vein?
Is it the money that it would undoubtedly require?
Edit: misspelling
Throwing untrained people out of a commercial airliner at high speed in the middle of a emergency is a good way to ensure no one survives. The equipment would add a significant amount of space, fuel and maintenance burden too, and require major compromises to the aircraft design itself. All to resolve a problem that effectively never happens.
I remember seeing an article back in the 90s or maybe even 80s that was exploring the possibility of the entire passenger compartment separating from the wings and rest of the fuselage and parachuting down in the event of a major failure. The thing is, it would be ridiculously expensive to implement, and there are very few situations where such a system would be any better than keeping the plane in one piece.
Yeah, escape pods have been implemented in some aircraft in the past, but the idea has always ended without wide scale adoption for the reasons so many have stated here.
Iirc, when experimented on, these ‘escape pods’ would enter a spin so violent it would turn the whole thing into a lethal centrifuge.
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Just carrying a few hundred escape chutes would add significant weight to the plane. Have you ever worn an emergency escape chute? I have. It’s like having a chair strapped to your back and ass.
Some valid answers are already given by other commentators. Just want to highlight that commercial airlines are operating barely cost positive. Every extra bit of cost added has to be at least covered by some other stream of revenue. How much more money can a seat in these crammed airliners make to cover the cost of R&Ding and maintaining additional safety measures?
Commercial airlines make a fuckton of money, but not in economy passenger travel. Cargo and elite passengers make the money.
E: Delta made over 50 billion last year.