I'm almost sure that there are some aerodynamicists or people related to airplane projects reading this list, so, I'd like to ask a simple question:

Why don't airplanes have parachutes (for the airplane itself)? Is it unfeasible?

maybe it's a silly question and for those that could think it, just agree my excuses for wasting your time reading it.

I think that, since space shutters have parachutes to help when landing, airplanes also should have something similar to help in emergency cases. Probably it's not used because airplane accidents is not common or just because of the weight and the space occupied and it comes with another question:

It would be fair to change space, weight and airline companies's profits (I don't believe that the profit's would change...) to security?

Some ultralights have parachutes, but imagine the size and weight of a parachute (or several of them) slowing the fall of an A380. Will there be any space for passengers? Imagine the immense amount of energy, any such safety device must be able to reduce to zero: The high speed at very high altitude at huge mass accounts for a huge amount of kinetic plus potential energy of the aircraft, which must safely be dissipated to get a plane down to rest. Does anyone know the largest passenger plane equipped with a safety chute?

Are you suggesting to reduce the size of airplanes to make parachutes feasable? To let 200 small airplanes carry the passengers of an A380 may make the chute applicable, but... considering the increase of air traffic (which is already one of the most dangerous aspects of commercial flight), I would not expect a safety benefit from that.

To be honest there are some projects applied to light aircrafts. I see sometimes ago a photo on the net of a small cessna planing with the safety parachute. Luca

I saw an article about this a while ago and saw that they had fitted them to airplanes bigger than untralights too, along the lines of small cessena type things. There was even talk in the article about extending it to much larger aircraft although how feasable that is I don't know.....I'm off to check google

http://www.flyingmag.com/article.asp...article_id=510 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_...rachute_System

Hmmm that was easy..

Not good enough for mainstream commercial flight. How many passenger does such a Cessna take, maybe 5? A380 takes more than 100 times that number, so you need at least 100 Cessnas, and as many flight crews. Air traffic increased by a factor of 100? Still doesn't make me feel safe, although... considering the result of the latest collision in Brazil: There is a chance of survival even on a small plane!

This thought came to my mind after the last accident occurred here in Brazil. It was on the last friday when a Boeing 737 collided with an Embraer Legacy jet plane. According to the news, the Boeing's pilots lost the airplane control because the collision affected the hydraulic system and there was no chance to an emergency landing. The result was that 155 passengers (all of them) have died in the accident. After that I thought that if the Boeing's pilots had some way to reduce the velocity of the airplane, maybe with a parachute, we could have some lives saved. Of course that a parachute for a Boeing would spend space not to mention the weight it would have. Thus, I remembered the parachutes employed by the Russian's space project to bring their space capsules back. These capsules are TOO small, reaches a huge velocity and have huges parachutes (where are these parachutes stored?). After that I got in doubt if such kind of security resource would be unfeasible or not nowadays.

I share the idea of increased safety through new methods, but I think there is something else at fault here. Wide open air space, air traffic control, radar, and yet, two planes somehow end up at the same altitude, longitude, latitude, and time! Seems like either an organizational desaster (sleeping air control) or a technical failure of existing safety measures (faulty radar).

What's your opinion on flight helios 522 (Cypriot plane crashed in Greece). I've seen the discovery documentary but I thing a lot of things is missing how come the pilots not noticed anything;;; And what's your opinion about locked cockpits;; if the door was open maybe the gay that was training us a pilot could save the plane;;