Hypoxia and Medicine

Re:parachute Q : Why is it a commonly held belief that planes plummet to the ground from high altitudes?

If people had parachutes they wouldn't perish from the plummet. Just kidding on the second part. I know that I should get my poetic license suspended for taking that many alliterative liberties with the language. Clearly I need to work on my writing skills. I know that airplanes don't fall out of the clear blue sky. I know that the few air crashes that do occur usually occur within a few minutes of take offs or attempted landings . I know that parachutes are completely useless in these situations. I know that I have flown over 200K w/ UAL alone What I don't know and I'm trying to get an answer for is why the perception of airplanes falling tens of thousands of feet is so firmly ingrained in the minds of the general public. Every time that somebody asks the Why a life preserver but not a parachute question. There are many answers that start with "Yeah why not ? If I was in a plane falling from 35000' I think that the airlines should give me a means to save myself Why aren't they ? " oops . I'm just asking the people that fly for a living and aviation professionals why do you think the public thinks this way, that's all

Public Comments

1. Yes they would, you can't jump off of a plummeting plane very easily. You've been watching too many movies.
2. They do not always plummet to the ground, some times they plummet to the water.
3. Additionally, the plane has to get very close to the ground in order to collide with the earth...
4. People will never have parachutes on commercial flights. If someday they do, then I will gladly eat my words but it just wont happen... First of all it is EXTREMELY rare for a plane to plummet to the ground... 99.99% of the time that there is a problem the pilots retain control of the airplane enough to at least lessen the blow of impact... Most times, the landing can be quite uneventful...
5. Airliners do not have parachutes the way cruise ships do because well simply, they wouldn't really improve the odds of surviving a crash if an airplane had to do an emergency landing. Furthermore, the decision of when to have passengers bail out would be very difficult to make. The pilot would have to way the odds of getting the airplane down safely with the current emergency or having his passengers jump out of a jetliner traveling 200-300 mph (this would be the speed I'm assuming the pilot might slow the plane to before having passengers jump from the plane). Jets are not designed to be jumped from, they're designed to fly high and fast, both qualities of which do not making jumping from them great. Even if this was a possibility, how many of your average airline passengers could realistically jump out of an airplane plummeting towards the ground at over 200 mph, pull the rip cord and then steer themselves to a safe landing? The FAA probably figures that the general passenger has a better chance of surviving any inflight emergency by staying onboard buckled in his or her seat and letting the crew handle the situation, rather than bailing out of the plane. When I fly commercial, half the time I'm doubtful that the person sitting in the emergency exit row will be able to open the emergency exit door if the situation arises. Do you really expect me to have confidence that he can strap on a parachute and throw himself out of a plummeting jetliner? I think not.
6. movies, tv shows....media.....all they here about is how planes crash on the news......and rarely a plane making an emergency landing....and people dont understand that all planes glide without engine power....they think only gliders can do that
7. It's because the public gets all perception from the movie industry, and a plane gliding peacefully and under control is non-cinematically appealing. Plummeting and screaming, however, is.
8. Because people know gravity works. And they rarely see any crashes in the media that are not shown to be catastrophic structural failures. Moves like "All the Right Stuff, La Bamba" "Top Gun" dramatically show flat spins and pieces of airplanes falling off. People don't educate themselves. So they fear what they think they know.
9. the reason commercial planes dont have parachutes is because if you jump out of the plane, you are going to hit a wing, engine or the horizontal stabilizer a good majority of the time. there are only a few planes that have rear entrances that you could hypothecially jump from. and parachutes aren't cheap.
10. I guess that the common folk find it easier to accept gravity than the intricacies of a flying machine. They are unaware of the hazards of exiting the airplane at 35,000 feet and they might also figure out that they can safely jump out of a plummeting aircraft. The logic that if the plane can descent to jumping altitudes and maintain altitude and safe airspeed for egress, then it can as well attempt a landing is hard to understand. People just fail to recognize that the airplane the embodiment of practicability. For them its just "airlines saving money"...
11. Facts do little to dissuade people from preconceived notions. Due to a lack of understanding that altitude is equivalent to time in aviation, most of the people you're talking about, think only of the terror they would experience falling from a great height. It hurts just as much to fall from 100' (okay actually about 3,360') as from 35,000', well at least the impact hurts about the same, but the psychological issues are extremely different for a lot of people. Also consider this, they want parachutes to jump out of a "dangerous" plane. What are they going to do when the first person freezes in the point of egress? Push him? I would have to agree with the cinema graphic component and say that higher altitude gives the movie director more frames to shoot. Even UAL flight 811 that landed safely with almost all of the original passengers, didn't dissuade people from their ignorance, they just saw it as confirmation of their preconceived ideas and a miracle that it didn't plummet from the sky.