Hello,

I am not an airline pilot, however I know a wee bit about flying airliners since I can take off and land the airliners in Microsoft flight simulator which seems to be quite realistic and fun. Of course there's a huge difference between realworld and simulated.

But today I just wanted to ask about a couple hare-brained ideas I had and wondered if they could potentially be added to airliners.

I saw this cargo ship being pulled by a massive parasail here:

http://io9.com/376607/gigantic-cargo...g-cargo-fleets

and it made me think what if it were possible to add some kind of parachute or paraglider to a jet aircraft in the event of engine failure. Would something like this be possible? It would be relatively lightweight and perhaps added to the fuselage so if the engines failed the pilots could deploy a giant chute and the plane could slowly descend straight down to
safety. Or maybe they could even get some kind of steering capability from a paraglider style if it were large enough. Just wondered what your thoughts might be. Perhaps the idea is out of the question but what do you all think?

The other thing was would it be beneficial and safe to use hydrogen or helium or other lightweight gas like the zeppelins used to use today in jet aircraft in a chamber somewhere on the aircraft to add lifting power? Perhaps it could give gliding capability to a jet or if not then a reduction in the amount of fuel needed to fly due to the lifting power of the gas.

Despite the famous zeppelin crash there is a company in Germany that still flys them and has a 100% safety record according to what I heard.


http://www.zeppelinflug.de

Al