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Cirrus BRS / chute discussion, and would you REALLY pull it?

Snoopy wrote:

All speculation still. And even if it turns out to be true, I don’t think anyone would go: “hey, the airspeed is blank” – pulls chute.

The ATC recording is out there and I’ve listened to it. No emergency other than a problem with the ASI is mentioned. Initially they state an intention to return to Aspen, then they ask for a vector for a safe area, then when the controller comes back to them on that they tell him they’ve pulled the chute.

Of course we can’t know there aren’t other factors, but it doesn’t look great.

EGLM & EGTN

Were they in IMC ?

Safe landings !
EDLN, Germany

EuroFlyer wrote:

Were they in IMC ?

Weather in nearby airport seems to be the case
Rescue took a lot of time to get around that terrain

Graham wrote:

The ATC recording is out there and I’ve listened to it. No emergency other than a problem with the ASI is mentioned

I am highly skeptical to what I hear in RT when s*#t happens, if they were flying Cirrus on AP with an engine problem it may sound like “airspeed problem” on RT

Not everybody is that good doing RT under stress like Sully (" we gonna be in the Hudson")
English ELP & RT skills did fail me once under stress but I was busy gliding

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

It‘s a high airport. Most probably they have been in IMC. Likely they had some ice. The departure is quite steep – so they might have been close to the performance limits of the Cirrus. To make the gradient, they might have flown slower than usual on such a departure.

In such a situation – slowly climbing in IMC with limited options tu turn around due to terrain – a failing ASI is indeed not the nicest thing you can have.

I‘m not saying that there was no other option than the chute – and I have clearly expressed in that thread that I‘m not a chute fan. I can, however, imagine circumstances in this flight that make the decision to pull quite understandable….

Germany

Graham wrote:

I have seen this morning on Facebook that a Cirrus chute was pulled in Aspen recently because they lost the airspeed indicator.

The plane — a 2017 Cirrus SR22T — had been flying Monday afternoon from Aspen to Eagle County when, the pilot later told authorities, his instruments “went haywire” and indicated the plane’s engine was stalling, Steindler said. The pilot, 50-year-old Tyler Noel of Verona, Wisconsin, later said he didn’t think the plane was actually stalling, though he only had seconds to decide whether to deploy the plane’s parachute, which he did, he said.

Press report Aspen Times

Out of Aspen by the looks of it, on a SID and in IMC they had stall warnings and possibly loss of airspeed. Don’t know what exactly that does to the screens of a 22T but i.e. an Aspen could drop of line without airspeed unless it’s upgraded. What will it do to the autopilot as well?

They apparently got themselfs into a situation where they decided to pull rather than fiddle some more. And the landing site does not look like flat and even, so there was a bloody big mountain right next to or in front of them.

Maybe wait for the NTSB short until we start judging the pilot.

Last Edited by Mooney_Driver at 30 Jan 18:48
LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Terrain there is terrible. If in a plane with a parachute I can understand why someone would pull it rather than try to land there without power particularly in IMC.

EGTK Oxford

JasonC wrote:

If in a plane with a parachute I can understand why someone would pull it rather than try to land there without power particularly in IMC.

Jason, I am not sure the paper got it right… how can a turbo SEP engine stall? I guess he rather got a stall warning with all associated pandemonium and, if he has a newer AP possibly protections going active. Not sure what these new AP’s do but if it does protect from stall, it might do a pitch down or trim down. And yes, if that happens in this area, pulling probably saved their life. Only looking at the position they actually landed on, a very steep hill, they might well have hit it if they had continued.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

I’d try pitot heat first

EBST, Belgium

airways wrote:

I’d try pitot heat first

Sure but I wouldn’t take off without pitot heat.

EGTK Oxford

The PA46 crash history suggests that is exactly what many did…

The Cirrus doesn’t have an auto throttle, of course, so the engine will just keep going as before, but the loss of airspeed will play havoc with envelope protection (if installed) and will pitch the aircraft down. Presumably there is a constraint on this otherwise a pitot failure would take an SR22 way past Vne in not many seconds, causing an aerodynamic breakup, as well as immediately taking it past the BRS max deployment speed.

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Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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