5 ms·

Is scaling such a thing to a passenger aircraft feasible?

• hef19898 4y ago
  Short answer, no. Mostly due to weight, speed, flight altitudes and different certification criteria.
• teruakohatu 4y ago
  I don't see why not but passenger aircraft are incredibly safe and the pilots are usually very experienced with at least in co-pilot. Even more so if you exclude war and runway related accidents which wouldn't be helped by a parachute.
  • Scoundreller 4y ago
    A parachute in the right place could help some of those landing/runway incidents too. But hard to imagine many pilots deploying the chute on a landing they thought they were good for.
    • kube-system 4y ago
      Chutes take some period of time before they begin slowing the aircraft. If distance to impact is less than the distance to deploy the chute, the chute does not help.
      • CryptoBanker 4y ago
        Not true, I think. Even a partial deployment will help provide drag and reduce aircraft velocity
        • Syonyk 4y ago
          But they also come at the expense of control. Once you pop the chute, you're a passenger, you no longer have the ability to control or point the airplane in any preferred direction. If you've lost that ability already, the chute is fine, but if you still have the ability to influence your path, being able to pick what you hit and how fast you hit it can be worth a lot.
          • Scoundreller 4y ago
            Drag cars have parachutes. I’m unsure why a parachute would keep you going straight only. All your other controls are still there, you just have more drag.
• barefoot 4y ago
  I’d imagine it might be technically possible but not practical. The weight required for ballistic parachute systems is substantial. On small aircraft (such as Cirrus and Icon) it reduces the useful load, and thus range/payload, substantially. Range and payload are very important aspects of commercial passenger aircraft. Further, commercial passenger aircraft are already very safe due to system redundancy not practical on smaller aircraft. Would a ballistic parachute system help with many accidents in this category? I would be willing to bet not. Ballistic parachute systems are not a magic bullet - they require substantial altitude/time to deploy (as much as 900 feet in a spin, for example). Many substantial aviation accidents happen during takeoff and landing below or near these altitudes. Would you pay a multiple of your current airfare for an extremely small (practical) reduction in travel risk?
• LorenPechtel 4y ago
  The bigger the vehicle the more altitude that is needed to deploy chutes. The bigger the vehicle the proportionately heavier the chutes need to be because they need to spread out more and they need to be stronger. Furthermore, most commercial aviation disasters occur at low altitude and the ones that happen at high altitude tend to be too catastrophic for chutes to be of value. (If something bad happens at high altitude that doesn't destroy the plane it tends to make it back.) Off the top of my head I can only think of three crashes where they could have used chutes--two where the hydraulics were damaged by high energy events (and would the chutes have worked properly??) and one fuel failure due to hijacking.