Why are airplanes equipped with lifevests instead of parachutes as we mostly fly over distances of land?
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If a plane is breaking apart enough that you can’t glide it down, everybody will already be some combination of dead or panicked beyond all hope of putting on parachute gear in the dark.
Also airliners are pressurized tubes moving at 550 mph. You can’t just open a window and climb out.
Remember that lady who got sucked out the window and killed a couple years ago? She likely had 250 psi pressing her out the window. Hit anything on the way out and you’re dead
* Have your ever tried to put a jacket on an airplane? Now imagine 200 panicking people trying to put parachutes all at once.
* It requires training most people don’t have to put on and properly operate a parachute.
* There is no good way to get out of a pressurized airplane at cruising speed at 35,000 feet, once a door opens everything pretty much gets sucked out all at once.
* Mid-air mishaps are extremely rare, most accidents happen during takeoff or landing, with little warning and where parachutes would do little good.
* Parachutes are heavy and bulky, and would reduce the number of passengers they airplane could carry.
You need to learn to use one. It’s not something they can just explain at the start like how to buckle ip.
They are heavy, bulky. If you hit water you’ll drown.
It’s not easy to put on right and it isn’t fast to do, and they couldn’t cram people in if everyone was wearing one.
People fighting to get out the door and open the chute in a panic = probably everyone dying as they get tangled and collide, etc.
It’s expensive.
They require a lot of checks, maintenance, and to be properly packed. Doing all this, every flight, is going to be costly and a big delay.
First of all, a commercial airplane flies at about four hundred miles an hour, try jumping out in that much wind. second, it’s much easier to show people how to use a life vest than it is to teach people how to strap themselves in, how to strap other people in, and how to properly use and descend with a parachute.
Third, parachutes weigh at least 10 times as much as a life vest. And finally fourth, in most emergency landings/crashes, the pilots are experienced enough to safely descend the airplane to an altitude and speed in which most people live
1. Most accidents happen during takeoff and landing. Not nearly enough time to send 150+ people out of an airplane in an orderly fashion.
2. The slowest a commercial airliner can safely fly is around 150 knots, or 170 mph, or 280 kph. Not very realistic to shove grandma and little Timmy out into that and expect them to live.
3. Airliners spend most of their time in cruise above 30,000′. Above 10,000′ it becomes difficult to breathe without oxygen. At 30,000′ a healthy adult has around 1-2 minutes before they pass out from lack of oxygen.
4. If you parachute out of the airplane and land in the water, or the jungle, or an alligator farm, or a swamp, or a cliff, or at night and can’t see anything, you’re pretty fucked anyways.
Parachutes are actually heavy and you need training to use one properly and safely.
Also, I wouldn’t want to jump out of an airplane going over 100 miles an hour.
1. The planet is 2/3 water.
2. You ever put on a parachute while your plane is falling out of the sky? It’s not easy. You don’t just put it on like a backpack.
Landings are relatively controlled. Everybody stays in the plane. The problem is when the plane starts sinking.
To add to what other people said. Commercial jet fly too high so people would pass out, equipping a parachute is complicated and people would panic trying to get help from the personel, they most likely wouldn’t able to use the parachute correctly. In the end the chance of saving people with parachute is pratically zero, chance are the plane will be able to land or will start to dive from so high that people won’t be ablet to use the parachute anyway.
This is because parachutes are for biplanes and otjer non commercial planes. When a propellered airplane stops flying (ONLY in older planes) it begins to fall noze down. This is whem you need to jump out and parachute. But a commercial airplane with engines dead can mostly safely glide and do a controlled landing. Buuuut if a landing happens on water (witch is the go to when its not possible to land on a runway) it is more likely that the passengers drown. This is why we have life vests instead of parachutes.
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