[ELI5] If Astronauts can be delivered safely back to earth using parachutes, why couldn’t the same technology be used to save a doomed aircraft?

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I definitely have a five year old’s understanding of aviation and engineering but I’m envisioning a system in which the wings/tail section are intentionally designed to break away in the event of a catastrophic failure, and a parachute deploys to carry just the fuselage back down at a safe speed.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Re-entry capsules don’t have wings (except for the Space Shuttle Orbiter and Buran). The easiest, safest way to land them is with parachutes. Propulsive landing would be the second best option. Interestingly the Soyuz actually uses rocket engines in the last moments before touchdown to soften the impact.

Airplanes already have wings to land softly. It’s extremely unlikely for a plane to suffer a catastrophic failure in mid-flight. Big parachutes which deploy reliably even at high speeds are a surprisingly difficult engineering challenge. Parachutes for planes would have to be huge. Even “smaller” commercial jet liners weigh dozens of tons.

Off the top of my head in the last few decades the only commercial jet plane which could have been saved with a parachute is probably [Alaska Airlines Flight 261](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261). In accidents like the two Boeing 737 MAX crashes I doubt the pilots would have the altitude and presence of mind to safely deploy a parachute.

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