Gulliver | Planes with parachutes

Canopy capers

Here's a video of a plane with a parachute—and why you don't see that more often

By N.B. | Washington, DC

IT IS a classic question: why don't airliners carry parachutes? And why, if you can make parachutes for people, can't you make them for entire planes? Actually, it turns out that you can. The PBS News Hour reports that on Sunday, a pilot was rescued after ditching his Cirrus SR22 in the Pacific Ocean a couple hundred miles away from Maui, a Hawaiian island. This particular Cirrus SR22 came equipped with a parachute—for the whole plane. The episode was captured on video (see above).

As the News Hour noted, incidents like this often prompt questions about why big airliners don't have parachutes, to which the obvious answer is that they are too big. The maximum takeoff weight for a Cirrus SR22 is 1.5 tonnes. A Boeing 747-8 can take off weighing 456 tonnes. A parachute (or parachute system) for something of that size isn't the most practical safety measure. The two planes aren't even close to the same sort of machine. A 747 is amazingly complex, with multiple backup systems. If needed, it can stay aloft on just one of its four engines.

It's that sort of redundancy—combined with a remarkable record of commercial airliner safety in the years since the September 11th attacks—that makes airlines confident that they don't need to provide parachutes for the passengers. Parachutes for all of a commercial airliner's passengers would weigh an enormous amount, requiring airlines to carry fewer people and increasing ticket prices. Training passengers to use parachutes would be even more of an ordeal. Relying on the skill and training of the crew and the design of the aeroplane itself to keep passengers safe is a far wiser course of action.

The News Hour blog interviewed Miles O'Brien, one of their correspondents, about his own experience flying an SR22. It's well worth your time.

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