[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?

Question

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.

In: 12

Answer 1

Most commercial air planes are aerodynamically efficient and can glide in low or no power conditions… this is also the only practical situation where parachute(s) will be usefull.

For any other scenarios, like mentioned else where it’s either too low for deployment or the parachute will only help land a fireball if not already consumed by it.

Also economics play a major part… regular inspection and maintenance of such mechanism may increase the operational costs, but not necessarily a hinderence.