Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard Triad Airlines Flight 123 to

            Kookamonga. Please direct your attention to the flight attendants at

            the front of the cabin. They will demonstrate the operation of your

            ejection seats. Please don't remove the arming pin until we're

            airborne. Thank you."

            Every passenger has thought at least once about the fact that

            airliners carry life vests and oxygen masks for their passengers but

            not parachutes. It hasn't always been that way, however. In the

            1920s, the airlines used passenger parachutes as a major marketing

            strategy. In 1929, Aero Digest Magazine found that more than 90

            percent of airline passengers wanted parachutes aboard--even though

            the chances of a parachute saving a passenger's life in the event of

            a plane wreck were slim.

            However, the customer is always right, so passenger chutes were

            developed. The first was a simple chest style that clipped onto a

            harness passengers donned beforeboarding the plane. This gave way to

            a seat-type parachute. After sitting down and putting on their

            shoulder harnesses and seat belts, passengers were ready to jump if

            necessary.

            The trouble with these types of chutes was that passengers would be

            required to calmly make their way to the back door and bail out when

            the need arose. However, anyone who has tried to disembark an

            airliner under normal circumstances will immediately see the problem

            inherent in a mass bailout. And from a weight and balance

            standpoint, the pilots trying to fly a failing airplane aren't going

            to appreciate the heavy passengers heading en masse for the plane's

            tail.

            In the late 1920s, the Switlick Co. came up with a solution called

            the Airplane Safety Seat. Here's how it was supposed to work:

            Passengers strapped themselves into ordinary-looking seats; in an

            emergency, the captain had a big lever--and a decision to make. If

            he believed the organic material was about to hit the fan, he'd pull

            the lever, locking the passengers into their seats and surrounding

            them with their chutes. The captain would then release the trapdoor

            located under each seat, and the passengers would fall through the

            floor and into the wild blue yonder.

            Although the Airplane Safety Seat tested well, it never became

            standard airline equipment. These days, the idea of personal

            ejection seats would give the world's lawyers multiple orgasms.

            Imagine the tort cases that could arise from ejecting passengers

            from a jet without warning--at 500 knots, from 35,000 feet!

            Some companies, however, are trying to develop a parachute for the

            airplane itself. Ballistic Recovery Systems Inc. of St. Paul, Minn.,

            has created chutes for ultralight aircraft and small planes such as

            the Cessna 150. To date, however, it has found that any chute large

            enough for a 727 would be heavier than the airliner's passenger

            load.

            Passenger Discipline

            As a captain, I'd like to see individual passenger-ejection seats.

            Giving the flight attendant grief? I'd simply select your seat,

            punch a little green button and away you'd go! Or let's say we're in

            a holding pattern outside La Guardia Airport, right above Manhattan,

            and all the passengers are going to miss important business

            meetings. I could eject them all, and they'd make a soft landing on

            Wall Street. In addition, ejection seats could relieve airline

            terminal congestion. Why fly a passenger all the way to Chicago if

            he or she really wants to go to Crystal Lake, Ill.? Just drop that

            person out over his or her hometown.

            There are obvious drawbacks to such a system, however. Because the

            passenger-ejection seats would fire through the jet's floor,

            passengers would be flung through all the baggage on their way down.

            And if a seat misfired while the plane was in line for takeoff, the

            passenger would be driven about 5 feet into the taxiway, creating a

            messy pothole.

            Perhaps the system is best left the way it is: We all get wiped out

            at the same time if there's a crash; we all arrive late if there's a

            delay.

            Tort attorneys have enough work already.