I have to agree with @LeSving here. For me the big question is whether or not the inclusion of the ballistic parachute (and I think they are a great safety feature) and the concept of “pull early, pull often” leads some pilots to do less training or “perfectionment” and to tackle more risky flights than they would otherwise have undertaken.
LeSving wrote:
Which pretty much describes exactly what I am talking about. Better pull the chute than to do the proper training and prepare for the flight before jumping into the plane ?
Unfortunately, the opposite is true. If you have an engine failure, and you cannot make a runway. the proper training will lead to the correct decision to pull the chute. Many accidents happened because the pilots involved had not been properly trained in the use of CAPS and when and how to use it. Which means they default to their PPL forced landing training in non parachute equipped aircraft.
A lot of the reasoning for using CAPS is simply based on the laws of physics. (And no matter how much hubris we have as pilots, those laws cannot be changed)
Let’s say you have an engine failure and you cannot 100% be sure of gliding to a runway. With a high performance single the safety and survivability of a forced landing off airport becomes a crap-shoot. Contrast that against the 100% success rate of CAPS when used within parameters.
Contrast that against the 100% success rate of CAPS when used within parameters.
With a risk of a spinal injury – see Cirrus link further back. It is not a zero risk option.
You might also land on something nasty, or kill some people.
I would pull the chute too but not blindly and instantly in every circumstance as Cirrus appears to advocate.
but the discussion always seems to revolve around the Cirrus
In the certified sphere, the Cirrus is by far the most common. What are the others (apart from rare STC aftermarket kits)?
Lots of homebuilts and ultralights have a chute but they need it a lot more, due to the much higher frequency of structural failures.
LeSving wrote:
Which pretty much describes exactly what I am talking about. Better pull the chute than to do the proper training and prepare for the flight before jumping into the plane ?
The point, which once more you’re unwilling to accept, is that people have a propensity to develop, in stressful situations, something that is referred to as ‘lizard brain’ – only the basic reflexes function. AF447 was a perfect example of Lizard Brain. The PIC pulled the stick back and kept hauling back on the stick until impact even though the scenario for unreliable airspeed should have been a simple ‘fly pitch and power’ upset.
The conclusion is that IF you’ve trained a given scenario adequately enough, IF you’re having a good day, IF you are fortunate, things will go well. But throw one unexpected piece into the mix and it’s a scenario which your training CANNOT cope with. You then go DOWN with the aircraft, killing yourself and passengers because that what you experienced WASN’T what you trained for. In such an instance
‘Pull Early’ – reminds you that you should remember that you have this option
and
“Pull often’ – reminds you that there is a lower limit / performance parameters for a successful deployment.
is a perfectly acceptable and reasonable mantra.
gallois wrote:
I have to agree with @LeSving here. For me the big question is whether or not the inclusion of the ballistic parachute (and I think they are a great safety feature) and the concept of “pull early, pull often” leads some pilots to do less training or “perfectionment” and to tackle more risky flights than they would otherwise have undertaken.
Ask Cirrus pilots that very question. In general, at least those I know and with whom I’ve trained / discussed, they do not consider the Chute as a ‘get out of jail free’ card in case their airmanship / preflight planning went awry. Plan B is never ‘pull the chute’.
The chute is always as a safety backup in case of, say, a mid air collision, inadvertent Pilot incapacitation, engine failure with no airfield in the vicinity – then it’s clearly Plan A. But no-one sets out to have their engine fail at the most inopportune moment, do they?
Peter wrote:
With a risk of a spinal injury – see Cirrus link further back. It is not a zero risk option.
So, in your mind, you’d rather risk a 7 in 100 chance of being killed in an off field landing which went wrong – irrespective of whether wrong field, hitting trees or power cables on the way down or for whatever reason – than take a risk of 100% surviving BUT MAYBE a 10% chance of a spinal injury – which by the way, was because the occupant either didn’t have the belt properly adjusted or the crush cones underneath the seat had been damaged by reckless clambering over them.
Interesting logic. You’d rather risk death than injury…..
you’d rather risk a 7 in 100 chance of being killed in an off field landing which went wrong – irrespective of whether wrong field, hitting trees or power cables on the way down or for whatever reason – than taake a risk of 100% surviving BUT MAYBE a 10% chance of a spinal injury
The 7/100 is a statistic across the entire data set of forced landings.
It is not valid for this discussion, because that data set will include all kinds of situations where a successful forced landing is really difficult or unlikely. Night, IMC all the way to surface, etc.
In this discussion, the assertion made is that it is a valid decision to not use the chute if a successful forced landing appears possible. For example, something like 90% of the UK countryside is fields and more fields. France is even better – this is my favourite pic
which shows why one wishes for an F16 when overflying those parts at 140kt 
If a pilot cannot put a plane down in one of these, in good wx conditions, well enough to walk away, it won’t be long before he has a prang on a runway.
If he finds his engine has stopped above a less favourable surface, and the restart checklist is not successful, by all means pull the chute. I would (having first flown it somewhere where it isn’t going to make a huge mess).
AF447 was a perfect example of Lizard Brain.
AF447 was a perfect example of a plane flown by two muppets who got away with being muppets for years because they only ever flew very uniform procedures and the plane had so much automation that the only (obvious) way to crash it was to do a Germanwings. Despite graduation from an “elite” national pilot academy they knew bugger-all about aircraft systems.
The issue over Cirrus and CAPS on internet fora has been similar to the issue raised every time a safety innovation has been introduced in transport.
The most recent examples are airbags, and prior to that safety belts in cars. I remember the time when seatbelts were first mandated. There was a body of people, those that had driven perfectly well over the years without needing one, and whose cars did not have one, who deprecated them as “not for real drivers” or something that would cause more accidents by “Risk Compensation”.
Over the years of course the body of empirical evidence slowly turned the tide on seatbelts. Airbags, much the same. Daytime running lights, when Volvo introduced them in the 1970’s, the pubs were awash with old school drivers deprecating them.
No doubt there was the same reaction when the life belt was introduced, and the light house, and the horse saddle…
This always happens. Ill informed opinion, which is contradicted by Physics, or the Statistics, or common sense…
An innovation is introduced. There is curmudgeonly reaction from the “old hands who are not invested in the innovation” So the rather irrational logical fallacy arguments abound. “Real drivers don’t need Airbags” they make you more dangerous, real sailors don’t need life-jackets, they make idiots sail closer to the rocks….
And then the statistics prove the innovation (EG 93 straight CAPS events without death either in the air, or on the ground) , then legislation mandates it, zeitgeist slowly turns….
People will no longer travel in a car without seatbelts, lives are saved.
This was why Cirrus introduced the slogan “Chute Happens… Live with it”
Peter wrote:
which shows why one wishes for an F16 when overflying those parts at 140kt If a pilot cannot put a plane down in one of these, in good wx conditions, well enough to walk away, it won’t be long before he has a prang on a runway.
Sorry but that could not be further from the truth. Have you walked across any typical field in southern UK recently? Pop out tomorrow morning (you’ll need your wellies)
Now deadstick a fixed gear high performance single into it.
Even if fully stalled at touchdown, a SR22 making a forced landing in a field would be touching down at or above the UK Motorway speed limit; in a 3 wheeler that has tiny little wheels mostly covered by spats, only a few centimetres of tyre projecting beneath them, the aircraft has top hinged gull wing doors and weighs almost two tonnes, most of the weight is projected through a centre of gravity way above those wheels, such that the likelihood of flipping inverted and trapping the occupants is extremely high.
From parachute activation height you have no way of knowing how furrowed, wet, muddy or stubble ridden the surface is, or what objects are in the ground… but more fields in the UK are rutted than smooth…and there is a metal beam projecting downwards right at at the front (the nose leg)…The perfect pole for the rest of the mass to vault over… At such point you would have up to 92 US gallons of avgas above you, and a hot engine next to you.
There is a simple emergency landing checklist for a Cirrus. One that is easily commited to memory:
For engine failures above above CAPS height:
Is there a runway within an assured gliding distance? Yes/No
If No: Pull the Chute
AF447 was a perfect example of a plane flown by two muppets who got away with being muppets for years because they only ever flew very uniform procedures and the plane had so much automation that the only (obvious) way to crash it was to do a Germanwings. Despite graduation from an “elite” national pilot academy they knew bugger-all about aircraft systems.
About muppets: I’m sure they didn’t want to die. Accident investigation is done to understand why things happened and to learn for the future. You are on to something though by mentioning „so much automation“. That airplane had quite a few design features hidden very far down that were counter intuitive to what „non muppet“ pilots would expect. So maybe graduating from an „elite“ pilot academy was a first tiny step in setting them up „the wrong way“ for this tragedy. I’m pretty sure 999/1000 A330 pilots (if asked back then) wouldn’t expect the stall warning to disappear below a certain groundspeed threshold. It’s a little like reversed controls, those never end well.
I’m also quite sure, if the pilots had a say in the matter, that those (AD‘d) pitot tubes wouldn’t have been flying around for months on end. Additionally, offloading bags, cargo and god forbid some pax, then putting in 15T more fuel to fly a nice reroute would also be convenient many times.
Yes, the buck stopped with them, and they failed. But why? Because they were „muppets“? That doesn’t do enough „explainin‘“ for me. It’s all complicated: the airframe, the rules, the training, the operation, the list goes on.
Keep me awake 30 hours, give me an empty A330, give me real life ice crystals, a pitch black night and some nice CB TS to shake it all up a bit. Obviously an experienced Airbus test pilot has to come along too, to hold some hands. That would be real training, and fun as well, the kind of flying that kicks the muppet out of anybody. But think of the €€€. Beancounters would jump down the office tower in disbelief screaming „airline xyz competitor doesn’t do that, their training budget is muuuuch leeeeeeess“.
Could the same happen to me? You bet! By acknowledging this I initiate the first step to prevail. And now we’re all trained in „startle effect“. And for now, the unknown things that lie ahead that haven’t been incorporated (in bloody ink) into a training manual are „never gonna happen“. Like an airbus that, as we all know, never stalls.
Steve6443 wrote:
The point, which once more you’re unwilling to accept, is that people have a propensity to develop, in stressful situations, something that is referred to as ‘lizard brain’ – only the basic reflexes function. AF447 was a perfect example of Lizard Brain. The PIC pulled the stick back and kept hauling back on the stick until impact even though the scenario for unreliable airspeed should have been a simple ‘fly pitch and power’ upset.The conclusion is that IF you’ve trained a given scenario adequately enough, IF you’re having a good day, IF you are fortunate, things will go well. But throw one unexpected piece into the mix and it’s a scenario which your training CANNOT cope with. You then go DOWN with the aircraft, killing yourself and passengers because that what you experienced WASN’T what you trained for. In such an instance
This is pure speculation. I don’t deal with that, I deal with reality. We aren’t flying super complex machines where, the sometimes undocumented complexity, can overwhelm us when it fails to work properly, or fail to work as we expect it to work (737 MAX). We are flying simple SEPs, most of us at least, and a dead stick landing is a dead stick landing. I have had one myself, and there was nothing “lizardly” about my thought process that I can remember (just don’t tell my wife )
I know that people are different. We react different, we handle situations differently. As I have said many times, pulling a chute or not pulling a chute, that is a decision for the PIC. You do what you mean is necessary to save your life. If you are convinced that the best way for you to survive is to pull the chute, no matter what, then no one can argue with that. It’s just that IMO any PIC should be able to do a dead stick landing at any time in a SEP without getting into panic mode. From that it follows there is nothing “right” about pulling the chute without assessing the situation and you realize that pulling the chute in fact IS the better option.
