Why do airlines provide life jackets but not parachutes?

Answer 1

This question has been answered dozens of times. It's simply not practical to use parachutes on an airliner. Very briefly:

1. Not trained.
2. Altitude too high for survival -- no oxygen and too cold.
3. Airspeed too high, you'd be killed instantly.
4. No room for parachutes, would have to remove half of the seats to make room.
5. Expensive to purchase and maintain.
6. No way to get hundreds of people out of the aircraft quickly. Most accidents happen on takeoff or landing; there would only be seconds to get everyone out. Even then, the altitude would be too low for the chutes to deploy.
7. No appropriate doors to parachute from. Must be done from a cargo ramp as on military aircraft. Airliners don't have these.

Answer 2

Providing parachute is not enough, even if the airliner provides that, it needs an extensive methodological training programme to learn how to use a parachute, specially while you are 30,000 ft. above the sea level in a plane moving at 200+ nautical miles. If you jump in such conditions, chances are that you wont land on mother earth alive as there is a high probability that the sudden shock will either result in heart attack or the wind speed will break your spine or neck. So, practically, providing parachutes in commercial airlines is useless unless you want to kill your passangers anything other than aircrash and also increase the cost of airfare.

Answer 3

This is becoming a common question, pretty much a repost of same answer I have already given:

Reasons why not parachutes (in the order they fell out my brain, not importance):

1. It takes room and time for experienced people to put parachutes on - even if folks were given vintage chest mounted parachutes it isn't a practical proposition in an emergency (what about kids, the ederly and infirm?). Also - are we expecting freefall or will there be time to hook up a static line?;
2. Even dropping folk out of two sides of the plane, to get a significant amount of people out in a stick type drop (like WWII parachutists) would take way too long even if you don't allow for a huge number of folks freezing/freaking in the queue;
3. Storing that amount of even chest mounted parachutes is problematic (although not impossible);
4. Assuming you had emergency opening doors (rather than the normal ones) the depresurisation (lack of oxygen plus cold) at normal altitude would kill most folks before you could get them out. If you wait until (say) 17,000 ft you are going to have very little time in an emergency to do anything;
5. Depresurising the aircraft will make any aircraft problem worse;
6. perversely available parachutes might make hijack/terrorims more likely ... Google "DB Cooper" for more information;
7. The speed of exit would make the ride 'interesting for even experienced jumpers' - imagine a giant grabbing your back and throwing you like a toy (this is from personal experience);
8. I could mention the amount of injures/deaths due to malfunctions, bad landing, collisions (with each other ... you are very very unlikely to hit the aircraft or engines) especially if a night jump or water landing but I suppose if the failure is catastrophic enough it is better than nothing.

If I think of more I will add them.


Bottom line, although it is possible to jump from a commercial jet, even at 40,000 feet (if you have supplimentary oxygen; cold weather clothing and freefall gear [unless you want to open immediately and land sometime the following day]) staying with the plane is going to be a much better bet, whatever the situation.

IMHO the provision of lifejackets is bordering on a long-shot as the chance of landing a large aircraft on water without catastrophic destruction is pretty low although it has saved lives in the past.

As a side-note, parachutes exist for entire aircraft (mostly microlights and small aircraft but their are test versions for big jets) - I suspect the sticking point is reliability combined with economics (such parachutes take space and weight quite a bit which equals money in air transport).

Blue skies =8-)

Answer 4

That is becuase you can not use the parachute in the velocity that an airliner have. Only experts can do a jump from a high velocity aircraft. Life jackets were put in the aircraft that isit would serve best the survivors of the impact.

Answer 5

In emergency if the plane land on sea, you will have a change to survive and most people still don't know how to swim.

Chances of survival jumping out of an airplane with 500 mph is pretty low. Afterall not all people know how to use parachute and have the courage to jump from high altitude. The old and the children will definitely die. If at 36,000 feet, no one will survive even the professional.

Answer 6

It's highly unlikely you would need a parachute since by the time you got it on, you would be
a. dead from whiplash or
b. the plane would be too low for the parachute to deploy or
c. the plane would already have crashed.

Besides, you need to be certified to use a parachute.

Answer 7

because you are usually going over water and the plane can float long enough to get passengers from plane and if you had a parachute then you are most likely to go toward the engine or tail end of plane and get sucked in and have more serious injuries but both can occur

Answer 8

Also I belive this is stated somewhere on boeings website if an airliner lost all engine power it could glide for over 100 miles, I know that doesnt quite answer the question. but just thought i'd add that.

Answer 9

Because, UNLIKE parachutes, life jackets are pretty much idiot proof once you have it on. All you have to do is float around.

Answer 10

Hmm, you cant open the door to jump from an airplane, life jackets
are provided in case the plane hits water