First Emergency Use of Whole-Aircraft Parachute

Ahotasu writes "Over at SpaceFlightNow, there is a short NASA news release discussing the development of and first emergency use of a production parachute system for a general aviation aircraft. Whole-ultralight parachute systems have been available and used for some time, but this is apparently the first use in a "certified general-aviation aircraft". From the article: "In October 2002, a pilot released his single engine aircraft's parachute and landed safely in a Texas mesquite- tree grove. The pilot was uninjured, and there was minimal damage to the plane. The safe landing made aviation history, as it was the first emergency application of an airframe parachute on a certified aircraft." Here's the company's website. Looks like right now, they only have models for a select few gen. aviation aircraft, probably the most popular models."

Comments

Hopefully drive down costs. . .

[WatertonMan]

This will hopefully drive down the costs associated with small aviation. Over the past decade or so a lot of manufactures have left that market - often because of liability. If, when there is an "accident" the plane could land safely with little damage to even the plane itself that would mean fewer insurance payouts. With fewer insurance payouts I'd suspect that the industry might become much more economical.

If this works as well as I've heard, look for it to eventually become mandatory on small planes.

Re:Hopefully drive down costs. . .

[ptomblin]

Actually, I think it will drive up the costs of aviation. The way the chute is anchored, it has to pull out stuff from the fuselage to deploy, and then the fuselage itself is designed to absorb some of the impact. According to people I've talked to, basically every time you pull the handle, the insurance company buys you a new plane. That's not going to be cheap.

What kind of person thinks only engines fail?

[TamMan2000]

I fly gliders, no engine to fail there, but people still crash and die...

Controls can stick, birds can impact the plane in flight. The list goes on, and on...

This is useful for those situations

Re:It is this sort of thing

[Arcturax]

The chute on a small plane like a Cessna172 is already pretty big. Most planes these are fitted on are likely less than 8,000 lbs or so.

Airliners full of people and baggage and fuel are incredibly heavy and you would need multiple chutes of massive size.

To get an idea of how massive these things are, when I took a trip to Australia back in September, on the way there the captain announced that we were going to "burn 130 tons of kerosene on the way there". That is 130 *tons* of jet fuel for, in this case a 15 hour flight. Even a domestic flight of just a couple hours is going to have a lot of weight just in fuel. Add on the plane itself, passengers and crew and baggage and you start to see the problem.

So I don't see this working even on a small commuter jet such as the Embraer or the MD-88.

Now NASA does use parachutes to recover spent boosters from Shuttle launches and they are fairly heavy, but they are also different shaped and maybe its easier to slow them down than a large jet.

So it could be possible, but only time and research will tell.

Great in combination with rotary wing craft

[SuperKendall]

The rotary wing aircraft talked about a few days ago here could use one of these - one of the major drawbacks was that it couldn't glide in the event of an engine failure, but if it can just deploy a chute...

Re:This is an aircraft manufacturer....

[mooneyguy]

I highly recommend this company's aircraft to any pilot...

Well there is reason to be wary of these planes, and that reason has something to do with the parachute. Every other manufactured small plane has had to undergo a spin recovery demonstration. That is, the manufacturer has had to demonstrate in a flight test that the plane can be recovered from a spin. Not so the SR20 and SR22. Cirrus did not have to demonstrate spin recovery because their official spin recovery method is to deploy the parachute. Because they haven't had to demonstrate spin recovery, we don't really know how these planes behave in a spin. There have been a few accidents in the Cirrus that may be attributed to an unrecoverable spin condition. It's possible that by the time the pilot realized his situation he couldn't deploy the parachute.

Deploying the chute is a final act. Once you do that you have put your fate in the hands of the winds and chance. That's not something that pilots are comfortable doing -- we never want to give up flying the plane in any situation. So a pilot would want to be absolutely sure that there was no other reasonable course of action before pulling that handle. Because that will be his last act as pilot in command for that flight!