The first time I flew as a kid I wanted to know where the parachutes were kept. Surely they would have parachutes if we were going to be miles in the air.

Of course not, I was told, if the airplane crashes it will happen too fast for anybody to use parachutes anyway.

Ok, well if they won't do any good I suppose we don't need them. So instead they provide flotation devices, in case youland inthe water. Hmmmm. OK.

Pan Am Flight 103 near Long Island crashed into the ocean, but nobody god much use out of the flotation devices. Nobody got any use out of them.

The plane with a damaged hydraulic system might be in the air for an hour or more while the pilot makes arrangements to try to crash land the airplane at some location. It seems to me that it might be nice to have a few parachutes on board in a case like that.

So when the pilot comes on the intercom and says, "be calm, we are having a minor problem and the landing gear fell off and the rudder is inop, but we will attempt to land in 30 minutes in a controlled belly down fashion. Please tuck your head up your a-ss while we attempt this maneuver", I'm going to be saying, "No thanks, I'll take my parachute now".

Can we bring our own? Or would that violate some kind of anti-terrorist law?

i think depends should be provided along with valium.

well in the plane or jumping out of it with a parachute,i'm gonna need both..

This is good. Thanks cute........

Good sense of humor Philosopher......

Actually at the speed ariliners fly, 600 mph or so,and the altitude they reach as high as 40,000 feet or so, if you had a parachute all it would mean is they would find your body farther from the wreckage.

my depends and valium are still holding up..

At least we would pass out from lack of oxygen while we thought we were saving ourselves and wouldn't see the end coming, and the diapers are an excellent idea

Ah I had forgotten about this post.

Well, 600 mph is pretty fast, but if they know they can't land safely and they can slow down around 5 or 10 thousand feet with full flaps and all, they can get below 200 mph easy. They have to be below 200 anyway under 10,000 feet usually.

If the plane explodes in the air and you are floating down from 40,000 feet you would probably be unconscious by the time you reached 10,000 from lack of oxygen. But some chutes can be opened by pressure switch so there are possibilities even then.

Pilots in fighter jets eject at very high speeds sometimes but they have some special features, like starting in a seat and having some material cover their faces at first to prevent the wind tearing at their skin.

If the plane has no control and is expected to crash. I'm looking for an opportunity to bail out.

The chutes would be too bulky and the added weight on a plane would be incredible if you had 200 of them on board. The expense and the training on how to use them would be the next problem. The speed of an airliner in trouble could be way too fast to jump out of. There is no oxygen up there either. An experienced jumper with oxygen taks may make it with some luck and if he could get the pilot to slow the plane to stall speed before committing suicide by spinning the plane into the ground.
A better Idea would be a chute system to bring the whole plane down in one piece. They already have these systems for small planes. The cost would be HUGE for one that size!!

itz cheaper to fight the death lawsuits than injury lawsuits

Maybe a chute system might resemble more of a hang glider than a standard chute.