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Huge Parachute Saves Crashing Planes
theodp writes "When his small plane banked uncontrollably and began spiraling toward earth, Canadian rancher Albert Kolk and his three passengers were saved by a single parachute. Big-as-a-house parachutes made by Ballistic Recovery Systems are stored behind the rear seats in small planes and fired with a rocket through the rear windshield; they're attached with high-strength lines to the plane's wings, nose and tail. Deployment videos here."
If I had an aeroplane, I would certainly get one. Seems pretty cheap considering that this will save your life in the event of engine loss (and various other conditions as well).
Prices are not absolutely horrifying either (starts at 2000 USD, which has the ability to save 225 pounds of stuff and human).
Stop the brainwash
Here in Europe, in my case Germany, a rescue parachute is mandatory by law for ALL ultralight aircrafts. That are single and 2 seaters with max 472kg weight. (Similar to microlights in the US ?)
All planes have that rescue system. A small rocket which pulls the parachute out in about a second.
There are not many cases when you need it, but it saves your life if you make a fatal mistake.
Most cases are pilot errors, ie. flying in a cloud without instruments.
Wings dont break off and planes do not fall to the ground when the engine stalls.
I rather do a safe glide landing than pull the cute, EXCEPT I am over a forest or rocky terrain (which can also be put under pilot errors)
Such a backup is a good thing to have. Larger aircrafts can benefit from it too.
Man, I hope those lawsuits fail. I don't care if it was a design flaw--nobody's perfect (though they should be obligated to fix it). I'd hate to see a lifesaving device/company like this shut down. Can the plaintiffs' lawyers possibly believe the crap they spew about trying to make the world a better place?
Forget IP law, guys and gals. This is what's wrong with our legal system.
As a pilot (ASEL, IA) and owner (Cessna 182), I'm not convinced I could ever "pull the lever" on this thing. Once this device is deployed, you are no longer the pilot -- you are just a passenger with no control over where or how the plane will land.
Flying a small plane is not risk-free, and it never will be.
Alas, you are simply ignorant on this matter.
I fly and teach in a Cirrus SR22 with a built in ballistic parachute. Frankly, if you look at the cost/benefit of such a system, it's wasted money - for the vast, vast, VAST bulk of SR20/22 pilots, the money would be much better spent on an additional, say, 160 hours of flight training.
However, there are many many situations where a balistic airplane parachute is a far better choice than an individual parachute.
One is an uncontrolled spin / structural failure situation. Now, mind you that the parachute is not strictly certified to open in all flight regimes, but, frankly, if your airplane starts breaking apart, you may well not be able to make it the door. This is why fighter pilots in WW2 often died despite wearing parachutes.
Two is aerodynamic design. The SR22 is very sleek. The way it is designed, it is damn near impossible to open the doors in flight (not that I've tried - I've done this plenty of times with cessnas and so forth), but since the SR22 is designed for speed and (considernig the speed) economy, making jump-outable doors would be neigh-on impossible.
Aircraft Survivability (at least the chance of) - at least one aircraft where the BRS has been deployed has flown again after not too extensive work. I dont know many bailed out of aircraft that can say the same.
Environmental survivability. These things are going to be pulled often over mountainous terrain. If you land with the airplane, not only do you have a shelter, but you have the survival junk you store in the back. Same can't be said for bailing out. Oh ya, and you're also close to the aircraft's Emergency Locator Transmitter for emergncy purposes.
Skydiver: "There's no such thing as a perfectly good airplane!"
Pilot: "There's also no such thing as a perfectly good parachute."
Skydiver: "That's why we carry two of 'em!"
(Thank you, thank you, tip your server, don't forget to try the veeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallll...)
Sigh. SR22 has expensive insurance. SR22 has BRS. Therefore, BRS = expensive insurance.
= BULLSHIT.
The Sr22 insurance is expensive beacause it's a fast new airplane with a big engine being bought by low time pilots. The BRS has nothing to do with it.
/ I know what I am talking about.
8? Try 167.
Obviosly, you're not a pilot. With your engine out, you glide to the ground in a controlled decent... not an uncontrolled decent as with the BRS.
If you loose your engine in a boat, does it sink??? No. If you loose your engine in a plane, it still flys.
Case in point, I had a "catastrophic" engine failure in my Cessna 172 a while back. Engine gone... pieces left the aircraft. I landed on a road and turned into some guys driveway. He was pissed because I was blocking his drive. Never asked me how I was or what happened. When he started yelling, I pulled him over to my plane... pointed at the big hole in my cowling and all the oil running down the side of my plane. He suddenly got quiet.
I had full control of the plane the entire time... there was a sudden Roll when the engine seized, but I could fly it no problem. Went through the standard saftey checklist... shut down fuel, electrics, picked my spot... got to best glide, tuned radio to 121.5. Delcared emergency... switched the box to 7700 and flew it down. It took me about 10 minutes to get down... I even circled my landing site and then dumped 40 degrees of flaps to get it down.
Now, I see planes like the SR22 with these BRSs installed and hear stories about guys who hit turbulance and pull the cord. That's a costly mistake if there ever was one. I'm not going to pull a handle that turns my $250,000 plane into a pile of junk unless it's already junk.
Lesson here... fly the plane if it can fly. A plane is nothing but a glider with an engine... if you loose the engine... it still flys just fine.
Bill
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
Sure they will. The FAA only cares that the plane can pass it's rigorous inspections. Actually the FAA has eased up quite up bit on safety and inpection requirements over the last decade or so. Believe it or not they want private/personal pilots to be able to afford to fly. For instance you can now do major engine and structural work yourself. Unlike commercial aviation where safety at all costs is the rule, private aviation allows for personal responsibility for such matters. Despite being much more dangerous than commercial aviation, private plane crashes are rare. Pilots generally respect nature, thier planes and thier abilities.
Frankly this is might be a good product but it can in no way make a plane crash proof. Things like major structural failure, crashing in an object (mountain or building), or landing takeoff crashes will render it useless.
Personally, I don't see much of a point of these systems. The likelihood of a structural failure or a complete loss of control is very rare. Anything else, a properly trained pilot can fly him/herself out of.
In the best case, sure.
In reality, not true.
Have a gander at the December 2004 Flying magazine (at least, I think that was the one) -- they had a really good article about BRS chute deployments and their contributions to safety, or lack thereof. The general conclusion was that they reduce the fatality rate by about 50% in loss-of-control accidents.
(Commercial pilot/CFII/MEI/AGI/IGI)
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
Credentials: Wildly inexperienced private pilot.
The thing with light aircraft accidents is that they tend to occur in 3 main different ways.
The first is inadvertant entry into IMC (Instrument Metoerological Conditions - essentially weather conditions inadequate for flying visually). This is all well and good if the pilot is instrument rated, but, if a non rated tries to keep flying visually, it is likely that they will enter a spiral dive, or, a spin. A BRS (Ballistic recovery system - ie parachute) will be advantageous in these conditions - passenger parachutes will not, you can't get people to jump into that sort of soup, and, you may not even be able to get the plane appropriately oriented for them to do so (in a spin for example, you know exactly what your seatbelts are for - you do a bit of spin recovery in training - a most unpleasant experience). Incidentally, a spin is when one wing stalls (fails to generate lift) and the other wing is still operating normally.
The other nasty that occurs during accidental entry into IMC, is the innocuously named CFIT (controlled flight into terrain - used in accident reports to categorise the type of accident where the aircraft is operation normally, but, impacts with terrain anywyay - almost always due to pilot error). If a BRS is deployed early enough then it would be advantageous here - once more, passenger parachutes wouldn't be much use.
Incidentally, the aviation community is a bit split over BRS in the above scenarios, the logic being that pilots may take bigger risks knowing there is a BRS sitting there as a backup. I guess that is inevitable, but, I find it to be much the same logic as "people will drive faster if they have seatbelts".
The second way they occur is with the pilot (and this is the biggy) failing to maintain sufficient speed on takeoff/landing either due to human error, or some other factor like engine failure after take off (which is another cool acronym we use - EFATO), and stalling and falling. BRS could potentially be useful here, passenger parachutes absolutely useless - you are too low, and there is no time.
Finally, the third main cause of crashes (and the smallest category) is mechanical failure of the aircraft (usually engine, but I have heard of a wing being torn off in a steep turn (for which the aircraft was not certified), when it (the wing) was covered in snow and ice). BRS could be pretty handy here, but, 99% (made up stat - a very high number anyway) of these types of accidents are non fatal as, as long as you have sufficient height, you can normally glide to a suitable landing site (field, beach, golf course, whatever - interestingly, they teach you to tend to avoid roads, they often have power lines running up the side of them that can't be seen from height). Another acronym here - PFLs - practise forced landings, where the instructor pulls the engine power, and says "OK - emergency, land from here!". Whenever you are flying, you are constantly planning for engine failure *right now*, and scanning the ground for suitable landing sites within gliding range. BRS would be pretty damn handy in these cases, especially when flying over inhospitable terrain like mountains or water.
My feeling is that BRS is a good thing, and I hope to see it being put on more and more aircraft, but, it is only an option of last resort, and should be treated as such. IMC should never be entered by non IMC pilots, spins and spiral dives are recoverable, given sufficient height, and engine failure will normally just result in a forced landing in a field. Nothing can contribute to the safety of a flight more than a cautious, sensible pilot who flys within his/her limits.
The other thing to remember with passenger parachutes, is, a certain amount of skill is required for their use, with BRS, passengers require special skills or physical agility.
Well, I know from reading the feedback that a lot of this has already been said, but some of this does deserve some reiteration... for which I will relay my opinions on the Cirrus/BRS systems.
,if you're dumb enough to be doing barrel rolls in a plane not designed for it then you probably deserve to become an expensive lawn dart.
When I first heard about the BRS in Cirrus planes I was quite excited. This sounded like a brilliant idea and from all my reading seemed to work great. Of course, at this time I was not even a student pilot and the only Cirrus was the SR-20 (the SR-22 followed on a few months after I first started reading). I'd had an interest in flight for some time, that much is true... but I hadn't yet had the financial stability to take the plunge so to speak.
So, leap forward to the present. I'm a PP-ASEL (in FAA speak... Private Pilot, Airplane Single Engine Land), and planning on doing my Instrument and Multi in the new year... finances allowing. So how has my opinion changed in that time? Well, quite a bit actually.
1. The only time an airframe parachute makes sense is in the event of a structural failure of the aircraft. I can only see two times when this would come about; pilot error (doing aerobatics in an aircraft not built for it) or SEVERE turbulence... enough to snap the wings in a negative-G state (VERY hard to break the wings in a positive-G state on most GA aircraft). Either of these are PILOT ERROR INDUCED under most circumstances. At the first hint of severe turbulence, standard practice should be to slow the hell down and get to or preferably below maneuvring speed... at that speed the airfoil will stall before the aircraft will be severely damaged. Also
2. A BRS "save" in a Cirrus occurred some time ago when a maintenance error led to the departure of the aileron from the airframe during flight. This was probably a valid use of the parachute in this case since it was a situation that would be less than perfect. HOWEVER... it IS possible to control a plane without ailerons. I've done it... in fact my instructor was VERY adamant that I should be able to fly the plane with only rudder, throttle and trim if it came down to it. I probably have several hours of time (under the IFR hood and visual) where I was flying "hands off the yoke" for some time. Nerve-racking... but doable. Even if I then lost the rudder I have at least once flown with elevator trim, throttle and the doors of the plane (sounds funny, but it works!) If you suffer this kind of multiple failure simultaneously then you probably should have landed after the first failure!
3. An engine failure does not a parachute situation make. In fact I would avoid this where possible. Engines fail... fact of life in aviation. A plane with no engine WILL glide VERY well. During my training again I had a joke early on that by the time I reached my first cross country solo I had had more "engine failures" (simulated) than I had landings. This wasn't far from the truth. Through sheer repetition my instructor ingrained it in me to the point where it's almost a reaction now... loss of engine power equals ABCD... "Airspeed" (best glide, 65 knots in a 172), "Best Field" (locate my location to land), "Checklist" (check my fuel, mixture, carb heat, primer, fuel selector valve) and "Declare" (tune 121.5, declare an emergency, give location, dial 7700 on the transponder).
I also have an advantage with the engine failures though... I live in St. Louis, MO where there's nearly always an airfield or a suitable corn field close by... but I'm ALWAYS conscious while flying of where my "best bets" are.
4. An airframe parachute will only really help about 15% of annual accidents. This might be a low estimate, but most of my reading tells me that the most common accidents are things like controlled flight into terrain, VFR into IMC, and often bad pre-flight. One example of the latter was a recent accident here in STL where a Cessna 182 (or 210... not sure) went down after a go-around at a l