I want to ask two questions.
Why don't they have parachutes on a passenger airplane?
Could it be possible to have a parachute designed for their airplane? Like a big parachute that can safe the crash of an airplane if it stops working.
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1$\begingroup$ Generally because they have extra engines that are extremely reliable. Parachutes do exist for single engine planes, but let's not forget gliding on the wing: a far more efficient way to make use of available altitude. $\endgroup$– Robert DiGiovanniApr 27, 2021 at 4:44
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2 Answers
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Simply put, planes are designed to not crash. Anything kind of safety measure you add to a plane will come with some opportunity cost - instead of that particular safety measure, you could have spent that money on something else. Overall, it's more cost effective to implement safety measures that prevent the plane from crashing in the first place, rather than trying to mitigate the consequences.
A plane-sized parachute will add weight, complexity, maintenance, etc. to every single plane that has one, and it will only be used in an extremely small number of cases. You'd be better off spending that money on improved pilot training, more frequent maintenance schedules, or any number of things that reduce the likelihood of a crash. The best way to survive a plane crash is to not crash in the first place.
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Simply put, the weight of such a system alone is enough to make it not feasible.
Rescue chutes work satisfactorily on smaller planes as they are, not surprisingly, quite light. For a passenger plane, the parachute should be (at least) an order of magnitude bigger i relation to plane size. This is because if you double the mass, you quadruple the forces acting on the chute. In addition to the bigger mass of the passenger plane, the speed is also vastly higher. Again: double the speed = quadruple the energy.
The structures needed to take the shockloads of the chute opening would be very, very heavy, making the situation even worse.
And... even with a rescue chute, the "landing" is anything but soft. A lighter small plane will survive that relatively intact, but a large plane would most probably not. If you try to lower the descend speed with a larger chute (or multiple chutes), you again get loads of extra weight.
...and... then there's the buildingin + maintenance cost. The system itself would be expensive to manufacture, install and maintain.
So: while it would be technically possible, economically it is not. You would end up with very poor payload capacity, and unreasonably high ticket prices.
