Almost every person, at least once, who participated in the flight, thought: why aren't the passengers of the plane equipped with parachutes?
Individual oxygen masks, life jackets, emergency exits - are provided, but it would seem that the most necessary thing that saves life in flight is missing.
Airplane is the safest mode of transport
The risk of air travel is very exaggerated. Statistics say that among the popular modes of transport represented by rail, sea and road, aviation is considered the safest.
According to the international civil aviation organization ICAO at the UN, only one out of a million departures of passenger aircraft ends in tragedy. The chance of becoming a victim of a plane crash is 1 in 8 million, which is incommensurable with the loss of life in traffic accidents.
The fact that not every aircraft incident is critical is also reassuring. According to estimates for a twenty-year period in emergency situations with civilian aircraft, out of 54 thousand people, more than 52 thousand survived.
In favor of the inexpediency of parachutes on board an airliner is the reliability, continuous improvement of aircraft and the professionalism of their crews. In addition to multi-day tests during commissioning, the aircraft undergoes a thorough check before each departure, which takes more than one hour.
Moral factor
One of the reasons why there are no parachutes in passenger planes is the moral factor. By flaunting individual means of salvation, the company, as it were, signs its incompetence in ensuring the safety of its services.
Most passengers experience a natural fear of heights, backed up by numerous films and videos about airplanes. Fear is fueled by the media in case of problems with the aircraft.
Not every person is capable of an independent parachute jump. This is evidenced by instructors who had to persuade, and sometimes with physical help, to transport people who expressed personal desire overboard the plane, paid money and received appropriate training.
An abnormal situation on board an airplane is almost always accompanied by panic. A crush near a few exits will not allow the passengers closest to them to leave normally and will nullify the chances of the rest.
Technical issues
A parachute is a rather complicated and cumbersome system, which requires skills and time to put on, which is very limited in an emergency. At the same time, each means of salvation is selected for a person according to individual parameters. Only carefully fitted straps will prevent injuries when opening the dome and landing.
If each passenger will be equipped with a parachute before departure, then you can forget about the comfort in the cabin of liners, not each of which is large in volume.
Jumping from an unprepared aircraft is in itself a dangerous venture. There is an opportunity to be pulled into the engine or crash on the wings and keel. The risk increases with an uncontrolled flight, which is accompanied by an airplane accident, turbulence, detached fuselage parts and other passengers seeking to leave a dangerous place faster.
After leaving the plane under stress, a person will need to group correctly and pull out the ring, which again is unlikely without the proper training course. Equipping an airliner with a system similar to airborne aircraft is not possible. It is difficult to imagine a chic cabin along which cables with belts assigned to each passenger pass.
The technical side of the rejection of parachutes on civilian aircraft includes flight mode. Most of the time modern liners spend at heights of about 10 thousand meters. The air temperature here drops below 50 degrees Celsius, and the air is discharged so that a person without a special apparatus will not live in such conditions for more than 30 seconds. We should not forget about the critical speeds for the jump, which for passenger aircraft reach thousands of kilometers per hour.
Economic problems
Equipping civilian aircraft with parachutes is also not economically feasible. The mass of the parachute can reach 10 kg. With an average capacity of airliners of 50–70 people, the additional weight on board will be more than 500 kilograms, which, due to the limited carrying capacity of the aircraft, will negatively affect the possibility of transporting payloads.
The average cost of one parachute ranges from $ 1-3 thousand.and additional costs for providing such a device to the fleet are affordable for not every carrier.
In conclusion, it should be noted that most often a parachute in the event of an accident simply does not come in handy, since the lion's share of wrecks falls on take-off and landing, when a jump overboard at too low a height loses all meaning.
