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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This one gets asked a lot.
Multiple reasons:
1 – planes tend to crash during takeoff and landing, too low to deploy a parachute.
2 – large commercial planes that drop out of the sky *drop* out of the sky, blown apart by some catastrophic failure or hostile action. There aren’t many cases where a plane is sort of crashing. Either they’re flying or they’re going down in a fireball of twisted aluminum and body parts.
3 – a 747 weighs 400,000 pounds, that’s a gigantic parachute you’re gonna need to haul around *every flight* for the 1-in-a-billion chance you may need it. It must also be unfolded and inspected periodically.
4 – some light propeller aircraft actually do carry a big parachute, it’s just not feasible for a much larger, heavier, and faster jet aircraft.
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