Owners of light aircraft can install a Ballistic Recovery Parachute to float their plane back to earth if a catastrophic failure occurs, this device has saved around 100 people, in an emergency the pilot pulls a lever and a parachute is propelled out of a storage tube. The 'chute is attached to the aircraft and slows the descent enough to save the people on board.The parachute is of a similar size to the one that they used on the apollo capsule but stores in a small enough space to allow it to be installed in a small plane. Why not put them on airliners, I realise that they would have to be made of much stronger materials to cope with the 500mph 'wind shock' when they were deployed and also the much greater weight but if enough people tell the airlines they want this they will have to do the research and install them.
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I can't imagine the weight of an airliner could be even remotely affected by any sized parachute (eventually you'd have to take into account the weight of a massive chute, right?) The types of aircraft that can utilize such parachutes are light enought to be moved by hand by one person. By comparison these jet aircraft have such a high weight that without constant forward thrust by the engines, even the wings can't hold them up (that is, they aren't able to glide).
Actually airliners can glide, there was a case recently where a 757 or airbus crossing the atlantic suffered a fractured fuel pipe in one of the turbines and the pilot was astonished to see his computer readout showing that he was losing fuel faster than the engines could burn it on full power. They completely ran out of gas near the African coast and the pilot glided the airliner into land at a military airfield on the azores. So they can glide.I guess the parachute could be made from a light but strong material which they may have to research and implement.
I think on the surface it sounds good but airlines will never do it because of the weight.
A major U.S. airline saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by eliminating the weight of a single olive in the first-class salads served onboard.
First of all, this is a great idea I have been pondering for a while. Multiple parachutes installed across the entire length of the airplane may work, but materials are a problem. The forces involved are great, but cords made from carbon nanotubes could certainly do it. Second, no major us airline saved hundreds of thousands of dollars from eliminating a single olive, thats ridiculous.
I've been thinking that we could blow some of the heavier parts off the aircraft with exploding bolts before the parachute was deployed if it was impossible for the pilot to recover from a catastrophic systems failure. This would reduce the size of parachute needed as less weight to slow the descent of.You could run into problems with igniting the fuel if you blow the wings off but this problem could be resolved without the tanks being ruptured.There are helicopters which have been fitted with ejector seats and they blow the rotor blades off before the crew punch out. You could hit trouble if premature detonation of the bolts occurred when the aircraft was at an altitude too low to deploy the chute, but this would happen anyway in a catastrophic systems failure at takeoff, approach and landing.
You can't use the chutes when the aircraft is on fire. The emergency excercises to re-start the engine whichhas stalled will take at least 5-6 minutes. When are yougoing to deploy the chutes?. If the aircraft engine re-starts you will have to jetison the chutes. It may be good safety option for light aircrafts. With the emergence of largeaircrafts like the Airbus 380, it is unlikely to gain popularity.
Think I stated pretty clearly in my previous post that we would blowthe engines and the wings off before deploying the chutes, so not much point in trying to restart engines at this point.
I agree with you though, that in the case of a fire there is probably not a lot of point deploying a chute.In the case of the aircraft which has lost power to both engines through a fuel leak, bad quality fuel and is trying to glide in to a runway which it probably wont make, volcanic dust in the turbines, collision damage with no fire, other forms of catastrophic and irrecoverable systems failures a chute system could provide a last chance option for the passengers and crew to survive.