TheOddOne, have you thought about your comment:
Since a hijacking has already happened using a parachute, it seems reasonable to ban them from the cabin
? There's no way in this world that I would entrust my parachute to airline baggage handlers. it's a piece of safety equipment - and about as critical as critical safety equipment gets. I've had the b*******'s break - (puncture a very large hole in) - a brand new Delsey hard case suitcase. Imagine what they could get up to if presented with a parachute. (The incident earlier this year of the Qantas (Sydney) baggage handler breaking into a passenger's bag and parading around the tarmac in the camel suit he took from the bag gives an example of what you're dealing with.)
I've carried a parachute on a civil airliner. (I was going to another city to pick up an aircraft that required a parachute to be worn in it.) Granted, it was in a very different situation to what we have in aviation today, but even then, we contacted the airline way ahead of time and cleared it with them - and they understood completely our unwillingness to entrust our parachutes to the gentle hands of their baggage handlers.
The four of us did get some strange looks from the other pax, and a few jokes were made by both us and the other pax,(truth be told, probably the very same ones the people in this incident did), but as I said already, it was a very different environment then and the paranoia levels were somewhat lower than they are today.