The picture of airline passengers popping out through the hull of the aircraft may be amusing but hardly practical. Grandmas and babies floating through an unfriendly sky like dandelion seeds brings more visions of Magritte than air safety.

Perhaps they may need to reserve the ejection seats to those that can withstand the option, but at least there will be those that will be able to survive/escape a plane trajedy. I do wonder about the cost...it may or may not be too exorbitent a price.

Can you imagine the onboard riot when a plane is in trouble and the passengers fight to get the ejection seats?

If you're concerned with passenger survivibility then why not provide them with those "manually inflatable airbags" you alluded to in your latest idea? Airplane passengers can forsee an accident better than someone driving in an automoble. At least the airplane passengers have time to inflate an airbag before the crash.

Avoiding/escaping a crash seems better than cushioning a crash. Ideally everybody should have the option. It would be better than only a select few on an aircraft. Having an ejection "module" would probably more "user friendly than an ejection seat.

Each ejection module adds considerable weight and one for each passenger would probably make the plane too heavy to get into the air. Conidering how the airlines are sardining passengers now I doubt your idea has the least viability in light of the financial problems whether or not the passengers would permit themselves to be cocooned into escape modules.

Weight and cost are challenges for engineers to solve, but that doesn't eliminate the idea as plausible. Private jets have more than enough open space for the passengers, and these passengers would likely be more able to afford the cost. Strapping in for a life saving action seems to me to be something most people would be willing to be a little uncomfortable for.

An ejectable module means more than mere strapping in. Commercial flights take place at about 30,000 feet which means a module must have an oxygen supply and be sealed. To remain within such a module for the 8 hour trip between America and Europe is worse than insanity. Passengers already have circulation problems for merely remaining sitting for the time required. The required restructure of the aircraft plus the extra weight of the modules and ejection machinery would make the idea ludicrous.

There is nothing worse than an inventor totally in love with an idiotic concept.

Great idea. I had the same one, posted as planes passenger cage. The one´s that do not support it I am sure will be the first to purchase ticket´s for that kind of planes.

Just mount a suitable Ballistic Parachute on the plane and everyone comes down safely. Currently the stresses on commercial airliners make this difficult, but carbon nanotube cables will make this an easy reality.

Regarding parachuting the airplane down...I had thought of that as well, however I didn't believe that there were any chutes strong enough to slow down a speeding airliner enough to be practical. And I figured if the plane were damaged or broken, that having several modular ejection sections would provide a better chance of escape regardless of where or what kind of damage the plane might suffer. I figure the hardest part would be maintaining the structural integrity of the aircraft with so many individual sections that would be ready to break apart. Not to mention the added weight for such modifications. However I am convinced that it can be done, though perhaps not financially practical. But still, the "safest" way to fly.

I use to work on ejection seats. First let me explain what a g is--if you weigh 100 lbs, at 1 g you weigh 100lbs at 10 g's you weigh 1000 lbs and if your spinal column is not straight it WILL BREAK IT your back! The Martin-Baker seat had a take off rate of between 9 and 11 g's. The McDonald-Douglas seat had a take off rate of between 8 and 10 g's. If you are not trained how to safely eject you run a very very high risk of DEATH. If you are not stapped in the seat when it takes off you WILL die.

I myself would not want to be on any aircraft that has crashed (which is a lot more likely than hijacked)and all the catapults (solid fuel rockets that lift the seats on ejection) start going off because of some small fire or electrical problem. Look at what happened to Value Jet that left a hole in the swamp in Florida a few years ago with the transport of oxygen generators.

All of the planes normally used as Airforce One do NOT have ejection seat/s or ejection modules!!

Keep dreaming--it will not happen in the near future--Someones been watching too much Star Wars, Star Trek TNG, and all the other scifi shows. Do not get me wrong I'm a big scifi fan myself.

There are ballistic parachute systems for hang gliders and small fixed wing (not helo's) aircraft that will safely lower a crippled craft to the ground. They are still working on ones for the helicopters but have not been able to perfect it yet--maybe in a few years if ever--problem is--those rotating blades have a habit of destroying the lines to the chute. The military was try to use explosive bolts to blow the rotors off but they had a lot of problems--still not in service and last I heard years from now maybe and that is a BIG MAYBE.

Ironically, a key factor it the original acceptance of aviation as a safe mode of travel was the elimination of the parachutes. When congress was given joyrides with their families, the wives only wanted to ride on the planes where they weren't forced to wear a parachute and given instruction in it. They took it to mean that those planes were safer. From Lindberg's autobiography.