And I feel even a commercial airline could make a similar device a standard configuration...that might make flying more expensive, but perhaps we could be able to reduce the cost somehow when manufacturing in massive scale...
I just feel that is do-able, and had we made a good one now, we could use it for all the years to come -- and that could also be used in other travels or in case of catastrophic event...
Granted, scaling up from a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_D-Jet to a 787 would be extremely difficult.
What failure are you trying to shield against? I can think of very very few commercial crashes where an escape pod would have helped.