Ok...another thread touched on this topic and I thought I would bring it out to the front lines.
This will be really open to debate and alot of personal opinion but....
Do aircraft like the Cirrus:
- Negative stability ( roll to 45 degrees and let go...perfect steep turn )
- Glass cockpit that promises to make the most backwards student think they are an IFR god
- The " incase of emergency break glass " parachute
Ok well...I'm interested to see what the general opinion out there is...thanks to anyone who sheds some light on this for me, or maybe we have a new topic to discuss over beers ?
-=0=LIR=0=-
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Sometimes I think it's a shame when I get feelin' better when I'm feelin no pain.
It's an enjoyable topic to debate. When cirrus first brought their aiframe (wingless) to Oshkosh, I thought they had a novel design (even without the parachute), but never believed they could take a chunk out of cessna like they have.
Does the parachute system become susceptible to misuse in the wrong hands? Absolutely! But in the same manner in which an instrument rating can be misused. It's just up to us as responsible aviators to embrace new safety devices as a tool to add to our regular way of conducting flights, not as an excuse to step up our level of risk. The parachute system is the same as an autopilot, an ADS-B, a seatbelt, an airbag. It's great to be on the cutting edge of safety and have a means to minimize current risk. But not as a means to equalize and justify new risks to be taken!
Anything you can do to reduce deaths is a good thing. The only down side is removing the Darwin factor.
The argument that it is less safe to have a chute is silly. Saying that pilots are more likely to take risks is equally silly. If you're a risk-taking pilot, you'll probably do something stupid without a chute. If you're a good, professional pilot, with an attitude of safety adn good airmanship, the fact that there is a parachute on board should never be a consideration in any plans. It should only come to mind during a severe emergency.
True but I also do see what Lost is saying. I think the simple solution is to provide better training.
Just as in cars, safety improvments in some cases require more knowledge to be effective, for example, going from a seat belt to an airbag, you then need to know about putting children, short people in the front seat. Going from driving standard breaks to ABS you need to know about different breaking for the new system. Going from an standard to an auto transmission again more knowledge is required.
These systems may reduce hands and feet skill but they all require more brain skill.
Specificly
- Negative stability ( roll to 45 degrees and let go...perfect steep turn )
* I think this one is called netural stability, the pilot is going to need to be aware that in a spin, unlike a cessna 172 it is not going to recover its self.
- Glass cockpit that promises to make the most backwards student think they are an IFR god
*Certainly will help even a good IFR Pilot with situational awarness, but I think you need way more time and ability to be able to operate it effectively. Heck I am a computer geek and they even confuse the hell outta me!
- The " incase of emergency break glass " parachute
* Yes this one is a tough call, kind of a knee jerk reaction is not good, so again proper training into the use of this last resort saftey device is a must
So are they safer in a safe pilots hands, for sure! Do they require more training to be safe in them? Again, for sure!
Cirrus' look great and have good performance, but my biggest concern is the fact that they are not spin tested. I understand not certifying the aircraft for spins, but to not flight test it. Each year many people in GA die in slow flight leading to a stall then spin near the ground. The chute is useless at this altitude, and this aircraft won't be giving you a helping hand. You can get a chute as an option on a handful of GA aircraft but with the Cirrus you have to get it. COULD THE CIRRUS HAVE BEEN CERTIFIED WITHOUT IT? I'm not against the chute, Single Engine Night or IFR they sound like a great idea if the prop upfront stops spinning (which will start to happen as the planes get older.)
If I was going to buy a new single engine piston I'd probably look elsewhere IMO.
In addition to what mellow_pilot said (which is right on), do you know how much it costs to deploy the chute? No one is going to take off thinking "if things get bad i'll just pull the chute."
ahramin wrote:No one is going to take off thinking "if things get bad i'll just pull the chute."
Don't people take off with the same mentality, "if things go bad, I'll just turn back?"(sometimes not quite possible for whatever reasons, or possible just not the best plan of action)
do you know how much it costs to deploy the chute?
Actually i can't remember the exact figure right now. Rather frustrating the way my mind is going south . In any case it is over 100k. Turning around costs way less.
As for the insurance i am not sure but i would be exceedingly surprised if they were willing to pay for a chute deployment.
I think most people are inherant risk takers.Just look at our roads, streets and cars.We have designed better roads and taken many risk factors out of them. With traction control. ABS brakes, seat belts, airbags and all the other feel good safety shit that is out there, what do we as motorists do? Drive faster, talk on the cell phone, weave in and out of traffic and get pissed and drive, expecting all this fancy safety shit to bail us out of trouble. I thinkmany of us are of the same opinion, aviaton is going to get safer with advances in technology but pilots are simply going to invent different and better ways of killing themselves. That is a simple fact of life (or death). When I was a young'un, small airplanes did not have a reliable electrical system, no electronic nav aids or even an artificial horizon so pilots were wandering out VFR at night and in weather they or their airplanes could not handle. Now the are wandering out IFR at night and in weather they or their airplanes cannot handle. Same big bang, only deeper into shittier wather. Just like the SUV that skids into the ditch, only instead of doing it at 60 kmh. they are doing it at 100 kmh. Just getting further into the ditch.
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The average pilot, despite the somewhat swaggering exterior, is very much capable of such feelings as love, affection, intimacy and caring.
These feelings just don't involve anyone else.
One very positive spinoff is that insurance premiums drop when the BRS is fitted. This was our experience in South Africa and more recently with our US based insurance underwriters (First Flight Insurance) in the USA. They actually refused to insure our aircraft unless BRS `s were fitted. At $3000 a pop,it really got my tits in a knot but then with the low premiums, I calmed down somewhat. Hopefully this is the case in Canada as well.
Secondly, I do not think that pilots generally take unecessary risks just because they have a BRS. We fitted them to some of our ultralights in South Africa which gave us more peace of mind when overflying potentially dangerous terrain. Students were properly trained with regard to the BRS as a last resort during crippling structural failure or engine power loss over impossible terrain which would not allow a safe forced landing. As with new susyems, training is essential.
If I had a BRS fitted single and I encountered an engine failure during a night VFR flight, I would hit the "pull to stop" handle without hesitation.
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HAPPY ARE THOSE WHO DREAM DREAMS AND ARE WILLING TO PAY THE PRICE TO MAKE THEM COME TRUE: CARL BOENISH
Not to be confused with Springjob, Handjob, Blowjob or any other job......except a flyingjob!
Here's an interesting question to ask anyone, but would be particularily interesting to know from an actual Cirrus driver:
If you had a complete engine failure a few thousand feet above some fairly flat open ground (i.e: farmer fields) would you pull the chute, or attempt a forced landing on your own.
I'd personally attempt a forced approach / landing without the chute seeing as the terrain in this example would be ideal for an off airport landing and any pilot with average skill level should be able to handle such a landing......but what happened if the landing was duffed and the a/c ended up on it's roof. What would the insurance say?? Mind you the a/c would probably suffer similar damage and cost to repair by pulling the chute, but at least pulling the chute, maybe in the eyes of insurance, would be more appropriate since the aircraft is designed with one.
Then you have the judgement crowd......your a pilot and you see a newspaper article with a Cirrus sitting in a flat farmers field with the chute pulled, what would you think?? Many might act confident and proclaim they'd easily have been able to land without having to pull the chute and thus void the airworthiness.......yet on the other hand, who's to say what the mindset is in the cockpit at the exact moment the emergency begins.
If you make the forced landing successful, you feel good, the aircraft is undamaged, but maybe the insurance and Cirrus won't like you. If you blew the forced and damaged the aircraft then for sure most people would come down on the pilot in a nagative way and would support the chute. Or, you disregard the attempt to land and pull the chute. You still end up without a scratch, yet the aircraft is now unairworthy. You feel good about being alive like scenario 1, but not so good about the unairworthy aircraft.
So what are your thoughts pro vs. con for each of the few scenarios.....maybe try and put yourself in the position of the pilot, the aircraft owner (if other than the pilot), Transport Canada, the insurance, etc.
a) Have engine failure, take your chances and attempt forced approach, outcome is good with no aircraft or personal damage.
b) Have engine failure, take your chances and attempt forced approach, outcome is bad with no personal injury, but the aircraft is upside down or wing torn off (for this example, assume the same amount of physical and financial damage as a chute deployment).
c) Have engine failure, take no other action accept pull the chute, land without personal injury, but the plane suffers the damage of the chute deployment plus firm landing.
It was my understanding that pulling the chute was a complete write-off of the airframe. It was designed to sacrifice structure to save occupants. Infact, unless I'm mistaken the straps that attach the body to the chute rip through the skin on deployment.
As for low altitude stall/spin, what's the difference if they have a chute or not? You should not get yourself into that situation in the first place. Again training is the key here. I would like to know how low you can pull the handle and have the sucker open. It's rocket deployed, so isn't it almost instant?
mellow_pilot wrote:It was my understanding that pulling the chute was a complete write-off of the airframe. It was designed to sacrifice structure to save occupants. Infact, unless I'm mistaken the straps that attach the body to the chute rip through the skin on deployment.
The straps do rip through channels in the skin, and the landing gear takes one hell of a beating, but my understanding is that it's not neccesarily a complete write off situation.
About three years ago, myself and another ultralight instructor were asked if we would be prepared to test the BRS 1050 C. One was was rigged to Bantam BJ ultralight and the other to a Raptor Flexwing trike. The first aim was to test the BRS on a pull engine (Bantam) and then on a push system as in all trikes. Secondly, they wanted to test a low altitude deployment and time the deployment speed. The BRS`s were mounted differently in each aircraft and as a result, deployment angles were different. The Bantam was on the upper wing surface directly overhead the cockpit and on the trike, it was mounted to the "A" frame on the undercarraige.
We took the Bantam up to 3000 ft over an area where we had a large ultralight flight school near a place called Barberton, near Nelspruit in South Africa. We were surrounded by sugar cane fields so there was a lot of overshoot area and flat farmland. We made sure that our wind drift calculations were correct and then on instructions from the BRS guys on the ground, we cut the engine, took her onto the verge of the stall and pulled the ballistic activation handle. In all honesty, I must confess to almost shitting myself when the rocket blasted the chute out! The silence, the violent lurch and twists and then just hanging there in an aircraft under canopy after activation was really weird and freaked me out big time. Not a pleasant sensation at all. Being a high wing aircraft, we were not in a great position to ensure correct parachute deployment but the ground crew confirmed and gave us the all OK. Both of us had our hands on the cut away handles (only fitted for test purposes) while waiting about 6 seconds for deployment and confirmation from the ground. Our descent rate was about 18 feet per second and we settled into a slightly nose high attitude and we touched down (arrived is more appropriate) in the confines of the airpark bending the main gear spar in the process.
I think damage would have been more significant if there was wind and I think we would have rolled. It is a big parachute and it scoops plenty of wind.
Brian Young, a 26,000 hr ultralight instructor tested the BRS on his trike later that morning. He popped the BRS @ ultralight circuit altitude (500 ft) and ended up having an approximate 300 ft canopy ride. When he landed, the trike rolled heavily, damaging the wing and bending the leading edge root tube.
After that experience, I have always maintained the following:
BRS`s are great when you are deep in the shit with structural failure of some sort or when you are over dangerous terrain. In all other cases, keep your hands off the "pull to stop" handle and use common sense and fly the aircraft to a safe landing.
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HAPPY ARE THOSE WHO DREAM DREAMS AND ARE WILLING TO PAY THE PRICE TO MAKE THEM COME TRUE: CARL BOENISH
Not to be confused with Springjob, Handjob, Blowjob or any other job......except a flyingjob!
I do not see how the decision wether to land in a field or use the parachute would be hard to take. If you land in a field you can take-off again. If the chute is deployed, you will never take off again. Unless you are one of these pilots that practised forced landings and never made them. There seems to be more and more of them all the time. If I bought a Cirrus, you can bet your bottom dollar that I would spin the sucker!
Cheers
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Success in life is when the cognac that you drink is older than the women you drink it with.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned here ... the Cirrus SR20/22 and Lancair Columbia 350/400 are so popular because they are fixed gear.
WTF, you are asking yourself?
Yes, fixed gear is the key to the success of these aircraft. The pilots flying these aircraft (ie well-heeled owners) typically don't have enough flight experience to get insurance on retractable-gear aircraft.
These aircraft are intended to be flown by very inexperienced and unskilled pilots, and BRS fits in well with that crowd. I'm not sure it's always going to be the silver bullet in all situations, nor is the low-time pilot going to always display good judgement about when to deploy it.
As has been previously pointed out, BRS is certain to result in the totalling of the aircraft, something that is sure to make people reluctant to use it.
I'm with you on this one. If you are in deep deep sh*t like a structural failure give'r hell on the chute. Better than falling in a heap of metal a few thousand feet.
I would question anyones logic if they say they would not prefer any chute at all. You can always just not use it.
I guess you could have a bad day if it went off by accident on short final or something. Still I'll take it.
Cat Driver wrote:If you fly it to a landing, you are in control.
If you deploy the shute how in hell do you know where it will land?
Cat
That's my big question concerning deploying it. My thought being that at least with a typical engine failure approach I can make sure I don't hurt anyone else. Speaking of most car drivers out there I'd hate to deploy a chute, land without a scratch only to be hit by a car or something because it set down on a freeway.
Very true, but I think the general argument here is if you don't have any other options. Maybe night or IFR or a structural failure. In the first 2 you may hit a house or something anyway, better to hit it going straight down relatively slowly rather than like 80 kts or whatever in a glide.
If you know where you are going and have options, take the control, if not take the chute
You've lost the engine, you're going down, all fields around, Day CAVOK,
NOW,
You being a TC certified "avg" pilot think you'll do the forced, now at about 500'(and then some) you know you're fubar, you won't make the field and you have a big house, tree, truck whatever that you WILL hit
obviously to late to pop the chute,
So,
What will the insurance company say? Since i'm not privy to the SOPs/POH of the cirrus and, I assume it doesn't say, if you have an engine out pop the chute, and on that assumption you did try to land, but regretfully you "missed"
Will the insurance claim "neglicence" or whatever they might call it because you didn't do the chute? Since you did have the chute, yet tried the forced and screwed up?
Another question - there was a recent discussion about water vs. trees for a forced landing, and most on this board seemed favoured the trees very heavily. If you're in an island area and you have a choice, pulling that chute is going to abandon you chance. I'm thinking of the gulf islands that I fly over quite regularly. It's a really tough call; In practice I'd rather have the chute and not need it than need it and not have it, but I do worry about how having one and using it or not using it could get you screwed by the insurance companies...
Hedley;
you wrote...
"Yes, fixed gear is the key to the success of these aircraft. The pilots flying these aircraft (ie well-heeled owners) typically don't have enough flight experience to get insurance on retractable-gear aircraft."
I can assure you its ALOT easier to obtain insurance on a Arrow over a 22.
CYYZ;
you wrote...
"What will the insurance company say? Since i'm not privy to the SOPs/POH of the cirrus and, I assume it doesn't say, if you have an engine out pop the chute, and on that assumption you did try to land, but regretfully you "missed"
Will the insurance claim "neglicence" or whatever they might call it because you didn't do the chute? Since you did have the chute, yet tried the forced and screwed up?"
There's no negligence on the part of the pilot in the event of either pulling the chute or not. This would be ABSOLUTELY impossible to prove in court, and a media nightmare for any insurance company, if they tried to deny coverage on this basis.
Of all the total loss accidents related to this aircraft (approx. 25) I have not heard of one case where coverage has been denied.
. In any case it is over 100k. Turning around costs way less.
