IT IS a classic question: why don't airliners carry parachutes? And why, if you can make parachutes for people, can't you make them for entire planes? Actually, it turns out that you can. The PBS News Hour reports that on Sunday, a pilot was rescued after ditching his Cirrus SR22 in the Pacific Ocean a couple hundred miles away from Maui, a Hawaiian island. This particular Cirrus SR22 came equipped with a parachute—for the whole plane. The episode was captured on video (see above).
As the News Hour noted, incidents like this often prompt questions about why big airliners don't have parachutes, to which the obvious answer is that they are too big. The maximum takeoff weight for a Cirrus SR22 is 1.5 tonnes. A Boeing 747-8 can take off weighing 456 tonnes. A parachute (or parachute system) for something of that size isn't the most practical safety...Continue reading
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