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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."
Hopefully no one packs a pack of pots and pans, or even worse, an anvil!
are you implying that the plane was shot down with... mind bullets?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The crash video one. Well, it had. I think it already crashed and burned.
funny munging
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
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
I don't see this being more practical in small planes than simply having individual passenger parachutes in small planes, and letting them bail.
The thing is that only works if you are at high enough altitude that you have time to put on the parachutes, get the door open, jump out, and have the parachute deploy.
This is much faster - you just pull a lever and it deploys, and thus is much more likely to help out in the more common real world scenarios where something goes wrong shortly after takeoff or before landing (obviously, you have to be high enough for this parachute to deploy, and it's hard to look up the stats right now as their server is toast).
If you had ever been skydiving you would know it takes a bit of training to learn how to jump and control the parachute I doubt your going to train every passenger before flight
http://Lenny.com
They did have one. But it deployed in the small closed server room. They're not sure where the rocket went and they're still trying to find the operator.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Yes, but that was due in part to sensors not triggering properly. If *your* sensors are on the blink (your eyes), what the hell are you doing flying a plane to begin with?
It's true these will not work for larger aircraft, but some have had the idea of breaking the larger airframes into a series of seating modules, and if disaster hits, the modules get closed with bulkhead doors and then each module gets ejected from the plane with 20-30 passengers and a big honking chute. Rather like the ejection system on some military craft that ejects the whole cockpit instead of just the guy.
The downside of this is obviously this won't work for existing craft. The planes would have to be built entirely differently to accomodate such a feature, and that would cost lots of coin, so of course it won't happen.
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.
Assuming you're the pilot, I imagine you mostly care about your own ass. I didn't know having a mechanics class was a required part of flying (which is why you have techs and mechs to handle that sort of thing).
There's those errors, there's the freak accidents, and there's those kinds of wierd whether conditions you couldn't predict (like a sudden fog when there's supposed to be none). I'd still like the safety of a parachute.
Your claim is kinda like saying that cars with airbags are more unsafe too, because people will rely on the airbag when they crash. It doesn't really make sense, so I imagine there's some other properties about those planes which make their premium so much higher. I don't think anyone who has used such a parachute would ever rely on it to save their ass. It might, but it is hardly a safe bet.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Hi fellow /. readers,
I've been an FAA certified private pilot for a couple of years and read many of the monthly general-aviation magazines/websites/etc...
Just to give some real info about parachutes and small planes.
Myth # 1: Engine Failure ==> Crash.
This is very un-true. Reading usenet forums (rec.aviation.piloting/owning/student) there are a great deal of forced-landings involving full or partial engine failure. From the very beginning of flight training, you are tought to always have a place you can glide safely to. In reality, this is difficult - particularly on takeoff climbing out, but for most of the 'time' portion of any flight it is very doable.
Myth # 2: Personal Parachutes are easy - c'mon, we see them in movies all the time. Fact: it is *not* easy to jump out of a moving plane. I took about 5 hours of aerobatic lessons, and let me tell you - it's tough enough getting into small planes, but try it with a 15lb full-chair-back size parachute stuck to you. It was actually difficult getting in and out on the ground, stopped. Add to that, most airplanes have doors that open like car doors - opening to the back. Any idea what the aerodynamic forces are at, say 100 mph? The aerobatic plane I flew had an emergency full-door release that pulled out the door-hinge pins at the front.
Now, back to the BRS parachutes. These are being put mostly on Cirrus Designs aircraft - very sweet, beautiful planes IMHO. These aircraft are *very* capable, fast, and a bit tougher to fly than your average Cessna 182 (from the reports I've read). Most times an aircraft gets in trouble, it's due to the pilot making a bad decision, not due to engine failure. Bad decisions like: flying into bad weather (IMC), scud running below low overcast, etc... These are the places where BRS was intended to be used:
1. Inadvertant Spins - the Cirrus is highly spin resistant, but it is possible & people have died in Cirrus following a spin.
2. Full instrument failure in IMC (clouds,fog,etc). This could leave the pilot with few ways to save the lives of the people inside.
A last fact: from what I've read, the BRS does not in-fact save insurance companies money. It nearly totals the plane. Think about a house-sized parachute attached to your average family sedan, deployed by rockets at 120mph. The planes are mostly totalled, but the avionics & engine (most expensive parts after the airframe) are likely salvagable.
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.
Modularize passenger/luggage compartments: when a module is filled, the next module is loaded. Say, 2 first class rows, 3 business rows, a small kitchen module, a 6-7 rows of cattle class, with bathrooms fore and aft.
Zero hijack potential(after all, the cockpit is TOTALLY inaccessible...). Efficiencies of loading and unloading, INCLUDING luggage (Your luggage is with you in your module...). Safety in case of airborne accident
Yes, we'd have to build a whole new class of jetliners, and this would only be efficient for trans-continental and oceanic runs, but this idea has promise. . .
I think it's great that our brave lawyers can see through the fact that this system has saved 8 lives, and instead focus on getting $67M out of the company for a failure, thus hopefully putting the company out of business and saving no further lives, but ensuring the brave lawyers never need work again. :)
if a similar idea could be used to save a sinking boat. Instead of a parchute obviosly, you could use huge balloons. It could at least slow down the sinking to give time to get into a life boat or raft.
What?
and on their discussion list was a report of another chute pull. If I remember right, on the first flight after the annual the pilot discovered that the left aileron hadn't been properly reattached and had pulled free and was dangling from one hinge. The pilot was able to get fairly low and slow over a golf course and pull the chute.
Given the choice between landing at DFW with no roll control or popping the chute... well the chute sounds pretty damn attractive to me.
--Rob
There is nothing new about either the BRS product or its use on the Cirrus airplane. This is a news item only because BRS/Cirrus employes some of the top promotional folks in the general aviation industry.
The fact is that the insurance industry considers the parachute-equipped Cirrus to be a very risky airplane as evidenced by very high insurance rates and restrictive coverage.
The occasions in which deployment of a parachute would be a good solution to a problem in flight are very rare. Having the perceived ability to "pull the handle" to get out of trouble creates a false sense of safety for the pilot; exactly the last thing you want to do.
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.
The problem with marketing systems like this is that if you save someone's life, you get a thank-you note, and if you don't succeed, you get sued for 20 million dollars.
My father-in-law invented and marketed a device that automatically deployed a parachute if a skydiver did not pull the rip-cord and the alitude is less than N feet above MSL. He got out of the business in a hurry after he was sued because the device did not work when the parachute partially deployed - which slowed the descent enough not to fire the safety mechanism, but still fast enough to kill on impact.
So while an insurance company might save money, the manufacturer has a strong disincentive to deploy imperfect mechanisms for saving lives.
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...)
Well, Cirrus have had these full airframe parachutes for at least 4 years, and Slashdot is only just picking up on the story!
The problem with the parachutes is like going from a twin engine plane from a single - they aren't a panacea.
At first glance, the uninitiated may think that the parachutes solve everything. But it's easy for the parachute to actually make things worse, not better. Why:
1. You are no longer pilot in command once you deploy it. You go where the wind blows you. That might be an open field, but it also might be a school yard at playtime, a busy motorway/freeway (depending on what country you're in), the top of a tall building, the top of a tree, in power lines, the edge of a cliff etc. These are things a pilot can avoid if they are still flying the plane, even in a state of distress.
2. The landing isn't exactly smooth. It is designed to let you walk away afterwards (even if you do have a bad back from the impact). Specificially, the aircraft's structure is used to absorb the impact.
I'm a private pilot (single/multi engine, IFR - or in US FAA speak, ASMEL/IA) and if I were wealthy enough to own a Cirrus, the only time I'd use the chute is if the aicraft had suffered structural failure and was now uncontrollable. If it's still controllable, I'm still flying it.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
BULLSHIT!!!
I am a flight instructor. I also teach on the SR22 (340 hours SR22, 7800 total time).
I am *not* a big fan of the parachute--I don't think it's as cost effective as additional training, but your claims about its use and insurance rates dont stand up to any scrutiny.
First, the insurnace bit: the insurance rates for an SR22 are higher for your Cessna because an SR22 costs about 5-6 times what your cessna 172 does, has an engine with over twice the horsepower, and flies a hell of a lot faster. Plus, the SR20/22, the only aircraft with these included standard, are relatively new airframes, which always make rates higher.
Second: the "instructor idiot" bit. Let me ask you: do you also wear a seat belt / shoulder harness because your instructor was an idiot? Because, the first thing that must be said is that your assinine comment is no smarter than that of the idiots in the 50s who said that seat belts would only encourage reckless driving.
No? then let me ask you another question: when would a good pilot deploy the parachute? say, control system failure due to a control line being snagged at a pully or something? Hmm.. let's see.. no way for a pilot to check this during preflight. So according to your "explanation" this is to be blamed on maintenance. So basically what you're saying is that "we should not install safety devices in aircraft because this will encourage bad maintenance." That is beyond stupid.
Third, there is another MAJOR aspect to the BRS system - a lot of these planes are being bought by 60 year old doctors and lawyers. Doctors and lawywers who have heart attacks. While flying with their wives. 'Nuff said.
I'd write more, but you are a moron and it ain't worth it.
Case in point: Flying with my dad in his Super Cub. We're flying along, then suddenly the plane lurches down 50-100 feet in a second or so. A second later, the plane lurches back up 50-100 feet or so.
Had I not been wearing my seat belt, I'd probably have been hurt, possibly severely -- there's support braces right above my head, and I would have hit them *hard*.
(It's not certain what happened, but presumably it was a vortex created by a jet airliner, possibly above us in the clouds. We never saw the plane that created it, however. It also did no damage to the plane (dad had it checked out after landing), but it certainly sent everything not strapped down flying.)
from the ejection-seats-are-cooler-though dept.
Only in helicopters!
Informatus Technologicus
Background: I'm a private pilot who owns a 1946 Luscombe, a plane not considered to be a terribly "safe" airplane by many. But as with any machine, treat it with the respect it deserves and it will reward you. I prefer to program in assembly and C, as well.
t ml
I'm not convinced that a "safer" airplane actually makes one safer. Twin engine airplanes have worse statistics for post-engine-failure accidents; the Ercoupe (a stall/spin-proof airplane which was about the only non-tailwheel plane of its time), was designed for a high level of safety but didn't have that great a record (and by the end of its life, had had all the safety features removed save the nosewheel); and the parachute-equipped Cirrus had a horrendous safety record early on.
See, for example,
http://www.aopa.org/asf/asfarticles/2004/sp0402.h
I think that reliance on safety features may tend to lead one into more unsafe behavior than one would otherwise engage in. I can say from personal observation at the AirVenture fly-in (http://www.airventure.org/) this summer that Cirrus corporate demo pilots pushed the safety envelope to the point of being grounded this past year.
It's an old truism that the superior pilot relies on superior judgement to prevent the need of his superior skills. With very, very few exceptions, wings don't fall off airplanes until some time after the pilot makes a bad decision.
Ecce potestas casei!
...remember the indestructible black box they have in the cockpit? Why can't they make the whole plane outta that?
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
Yeah, except if the freakin plane is falling out of the sky, I'd be willing to take my chances with the parachute. I may not make a Golden Knights worthy landing, but at least I'd have a chance.
WTF? Over?
Keep in mind these BRS are not designed for use when the engine fails. When the engine fails, you land the airplane as a glider. It'll be a heavy, short winged, inefficent glider, but it'll still fly. As a pilot, I spent hours and hours training to do this sort of thing.
The purpose of BRS are when there is a structural failure or when the airplane has become uncontrolled, such as getting into a spin from which the pilot cannot recover. It's really a last ditch attempt when there is no other way of staying alive.
Don't expect to just dust yourself off and walk away from a BRS landing either. The plane is going to be seriously bent, likely a total loss after the impact. Chances are you'll also have spinal injuries, but at least you'll be alive.
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.
Maybe someone with more experience than myself can chime in?
Yes, IAALP (I am a licensed pilot). It's also the first time I've posted on slashdot. Please be gentle in modding.
I don't see this being more practical in small planes than simply having individual passenger parachutes in small planes, and letting them bail.
I personally knew the man who died in the Oct 29 plane crash in Rhode Island. That article is a bit inaccurate, but all the news reports were in regards to the crash. He had built the plane (Adventure Air Amphibious 6-seater) in his garage over the course of almost 15 years and it had only been in the air for about a month when it went down. During that entire time he studied to get his private pilot's certificate and all the relevant certifications to properly fly his plane. He was a very good pilot by all the accounts that I had heard (my father - he's also a pilot, and other friends of his).
Anyways, the plane went down about 2.5 miles off the end of the runway, which is about a minute of flying, and by my guess (I am a student pilot with 47 flight hours logged), maybe 1000' or 1500' of elevation AGL. I don't yet know what went wrong that day, but I get the impression from the eyewitness report that the plane was intact until it hit. The bigger factor for me is that I saw how much detail he put into the plane... he was a stickler for perfection and he knew his stuff (he studied mechanical engineering before going into law). So this leads me to believe that the plane was OK as far as the airframe. With a huge parachute like that and even just 500' elevation to pull it, he just might have survived the crash.
The cockpit of that plane and the big harnesses that he had in there would have taken more time to get out than he had. Whole-plane parachutes give pilots more time to react, rather than having to aim the plane away from (as was the case in Paul's crash) a shopping mall, unbuckle yourself, open the canopy (not an option in certain planes where you'd have to push the door against the air resistance), bail, and pull your chute. This is a big problem because most crashes happen in the very first or the very last minutes of flying (when the plane is flying slow and is more susceptible[sp?] to stalling). It can save lives.
Just my $0.02.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
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.
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