eddsPeter wrote:
what are your opinions and strategies to decide to pull or to glide?
I think the best strategy is to pull the chute at a height where you still have a generous safe glide option, while CAPS is highly reliable, the real question do you want to pull it before or after losing your safe glide option?
- Before, is far more safer IMO and worst case you can revert to safe glide (with some liability from dragging the chute)
- After, you rely on it being working and honestly if it is not working you don’t wanna know that
By analogy I know some who got really in trouble trying to fire a self-launch glider in the last minute without having glide options available, those who find out that the engine is not working at 2000ft do managed to glide it to a field even with load of drag, same can be said about bailing out with your own parachute or stay in the aircraft? or making circles until you hit a farm vs stretching it to a runway?
Now insurance is an interesting one AFAIK for all aircraft: you better crash with no third party damage, write off your aircraft but get out of it without a scratch, that is hard to achieve, CAPS does this for me in a Cirrus, so I would just take it 
eddsPeter wrote:
I think to land the aircraft save without damage compared to land uncontrolled somewhere on the chute is the much better choice for every involved party,
I absolutely agree. I am not a Cirrus pilot, by choice.
If I found out that an insurer was going to pay or not pay based upon my decision as the pilot to use or not a parachute, I would either not buy the plane, or the insurance. I can imagine a very few circumstances where I would appreciate having the ’chute – and I carefully minimize my flying in those circumstances! I like the idea that a passenger could pull the ’chute in the case of pilot incapacitation, and I have read that this has happened. Good one, for a very rare situation. More commonly, apparently, a Cirrus pilot pulls the ’chute, resulting in a loss of control of the aircraft, as it glides, and then creates harm for innocent people on the ground. Not fair!
Every passenger boarding a plane knows that there is a tiny risk that they could be along for the ride with no pilot, they still took the flight. No one on the ground imagines that a pilot will voluntarily surrender control of a plane, and then ride along as it hits them!
As I very occasionally fly over a built up area, for which a safe gliding lading would be difficult. I would still rather try to point the plane into an unoccupied area, even at my own risk, than allow it to drift aimlessly. If a pilot is not confident that they can land the airplane, they should not fly the plane. Because, a fair amount of higher risk flying (where the accidents are originating anyway) seems to be at altitudes too low for the ’chute to be effective anyway.
In more than forty years of flying, I have never wished I was equipped with a parachute – which include the years of flying jumpers, where policy required me to wear one. I have instead, trained, and extensively practiced to minimize the risk of a forced landing, and thereafter, to make the best of it if I have to – I’ve done four, and haven’t damaged a plane doing one yet.
eddsPeter wrote:
the insurance would only pay, if in case of emergency the chute is pulled, they wouldn‘t pay if he would have tried the landing, as I did, and something went wrong and leads to a crash.
If that is true, this is totally inacceptable. Rubbish as well. You are required to try to keep the damage to a minimum, which is definitly not the case by pulling the shute in a situation where you know you can make it back to the field. In fact, I would look at that as wilful damage as to avoid paying for a new engine as you did in favour for making sure the plane is totalled. Apart, pulling the chute does not give you a guarantee that you will survive unscarted, so if your situation is clear, your altitude enough, you have the field in sight and know you can land ok, then pulling the chute is something I would find a reason to refuse insurance payout.
Cirrus of course wants people to pull early as that usually means they can sell another plane. Not only, clearly, as it appears it is the one thing they have done to drill into their pilots to reduce the initally apalling crash figures.
@lbra wrote:
Before, is far more safer IMO and worst case you can revert to safe glide (with some liability from dragging the chute)
To avoid misunderstandings: are you really able to control the glide after you activated the chute? If this is the chase, how do you calculate the impact of the drag generated by the chute? What is your glide ratio then, according to the manual?
Drag chute is not necessarily an enemy when the engine stops, if partial CAPS deployment makes a STOL conversion for the Cirrus, I would take it
Now the speculative part, I think it will be hard to estimate L/D on partial deployment with no engine, but I am guessing on full deployment you are slowed down to (20 kts VS, 0 kts IAS) while under no deployment you are at (10kts VS, 100 kts IAS), as long as chute does not interfere with aircraft controls and balance, you can still be able to fly the glide and control at slower speeds than VS0, so my guess glide ratio on half wing loading would be more at 1:3 on 50kts glide rather than 1:10 at 90kts, not enough to stretch it but crash-wise it still mean “lower energy”, this is edge case, the relevant ones: you pull and it works in order, you pull and simply nothing happens
Looking at loss of power scenarios some CAPS deployments happened at 400ft when undershooting it still worked !!!
https://www.cirruspilots.org/copa/safety_programs/w/safety_pages/723.cirrus-caps-history.aspx
But I personally think the chute is mostly useful for loss of control (imc, icing, spins), I don’t think these guys would have to pull it for loss of power
https://rec.aviation.soaring.narkive.com/P35M1lyF/accident-in-namibia-sh-ventus-2cxm:i.87.2.full
As a pilot you need to assess the situation and go for the best option.
If there is a runway available within glide distance I would go for the runway. At latest 1000ft AGL I would make the go/nogo decision: if landing is assured I would continue and land, otherwise I would pull the chute.
With the Cirrus I would not go for a field. The landing speed is higher compared to a PA28 or C172 and an off-airport landing imposes risk: there might be a ditch which you haven’t spot, you might hit something, you could land short or overrun the field, lose control, etc.
With the chute you can be fairly certain that it will bring you down unharmed so I consider that a better option than a forced landing.
At night or in IMC conditions I would glide to what I think is a suitable place (by looking at the G1000 MFD) and pull the chute.
Regarding partial CAPS deployment: there has been an occasion where the rocket fired but the chute did not deploy. I think it was in 2007?
That has been fixed via a Mandatory Service Bulletin.
lenthamen wrote:
The landing speed is higher compared to a PA28 or C172 and an off-airport landing imposes risk: there might be a ditch which you haven’t spot, you might hit something, you could land short or overrun the field, lose control, etc.
In a Cirrus, a ’chute deployed landing is very certainly out of control, and “hitting something” is an absolute certainty. Writing off the plane is likely. If you practice forced landings in any airplane, your skills will improve. There is a chance, and better with better pilot skill and practice, that a forced landing results in little or no damage, and very certainly leaves the pilot in control to avoid vulnerable innocents on the ground. Yes, over the total dark on a night flight, I would probably pull the ’chute. It is my choice to not expose myself to that risk.
An airplane descending under a ‘chute is not under control the same way as an airplane pulling a ’chute. Once descending under the ’chute, the wings are no longer providing any lift, so the flight controls are doing bugger all to provide directional control – the controls, like the wings, are stalled. I have been told that there is a procedure for the Cirrus to restart the engine during a ’chute descent to direct the glide. Ah… okay… if you can start and run the engine, why’d you deploy the ’chute?
The key is to remember that it is a certification requirement that any airplane be able to be landed without engine power, so maintain the skills to do it!
We had a case near here where a Cirrus pilot performed the factory approved landing technique and parachuted neatly into some high tension cables. As you can imagine, this ended very badly. Why on earth would you ever give up having control of how you make contact with the ground unless the situation is truly desperate (structural failure, over mountains, night with no road or runway in sight, …)? Originally they included the chute because one of the Klapmeier brothers had been in a mid-air which he was very lucky to survive.
I can’t comment on the actual event in this case but I do appreciate the chute of the Cirrus and think it is a very good feature.
When flying at night, IFR in poor weather and over remote areas with few options I prefer to do it in something with a chute.
