"

 bail out or bale out? 
For ""escape by parachute"", my copy of Chambers Dictionary authorizes both spellings equally. I am British. I am more familiar with the spelling ""bale out"". Perhaps this is yet another case where usual UK and USA spellings differ.  
First, ""bailing water"" is never spelt baling water and I doubt you'd find that in Chambers.
For the parachute bailing, we use British English almost exclusively for the most part in Australia too, yet I've never once seen this use of bale (as in ""bale out of an aircraft"") although it is evidently an alternate spelling of bail. But since ""bail out of an aircraft"" is the way it's spelt at least 50% of the time in Britain and close to 100% of the time elsewhere (according to this WorldWideWords article), don't you think this information should go at the Bail disambig page on Wikipedia  and there is already a link to this from Bale.  "