I have a friend and colleague who skydives recreationally, in places all over the globe.
When he travels somewhere, he will typically check his suitcase, but he carries on his parachute. His reasoning is that he can skydive without clean socks and underwear, but he can’t skydive without a parachute. Besides, he packs it himself, and the last thing he wants is for the bag-sorting machinery to catch an edge and rip or tear anything.
(To be fair, this isn’t him, but it’s a similar idea.)
Given that his regular parachute fits in a carry-on sizer, he just carries it on and stuffs it into the overhead bin.
It’s not uncommon for someone to notice what he’s doing, and ask whether or not that’s a parachute. His favourite response?
“What - they didn’t give you one, too?!?”
OK - several people have pointed out that while the story may be amusing, it’s not helpful. You know what else isn’t helpful on a passenger jet?
You’re asking a group of untrained members of the public to strap on a device they have zero training with, and figure out how to exit a plummeting jetliner, without hurting themselves. That’s next to impossible, for a few reasons.
Passengers. What are you going to do with Grandma? Or a lap baby? Or someone who’s wheelchair bound?
Exits. How are you going to exit the aircraft? Skydiving planes have specially designed doors. Passenger jetliners do not. Remember - that jet is moving at 500 miles per hour.
The large tail slicing through the sky is going to slice both you and your parachute to ribbons as you exit the aircraft.
Time. It takes 20 minutes to get ordinary people to WALK off an aircraft. Now you’re asking them to strap on a complicated piece of equipment they’ve never worn before, calmly queue up, and exit the aircraft. Besides, you KNOW some idiot is going to insist on bringing his carry-on bag with him.
Necessity. Imagine the Miracle on the Hudson? US Airways 1549 landed on the Hudson River in New York City.
Imagine if the parachute order was given? Grandma hanging in her chute, hanging off the Empire State building. Lap babies getting run over by taxi cabs. People landing in the Hudson and drowning because they can’t swim and they get tangled in their chute.
Nearly every single accident out there is better managed by putting the large metal tube in the hands of a skilled pilot, and attempting to bring the whole thing down in as safe a manner as possible.
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