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

Malibuflyer wrote:

people still die in chute equipped planes

That’s right, because the chute doesn’t always cover all situations, i.e. turn to final, or engine out below 500ft. And then there are pilots who fly an enhanced risk because of the chute. As in, when flying over a closed cloud top over the Alps in winter, you can end up on an inaccessible precipice in -20°C snow and ice… it’s all complicated.

But does that make the argument for the chute any weaker ? In a given situation that is, in theory, equally recoverable both by chute and emergency landing, the chute is always the safer option compared to an emergency landing.

The existence of situations where the chute is no option doesn’t have any effect on the situations where it is.

Last Edited by EuroFlyer at 15 Jan 12:04
Safe landings !
EDLN, Germany

Yes that is a self evident truth if the chute was a truly zero cost option.

There is however a cost to the chute. It isn’t zero. It costs best part of €15k every 10 years to service it, and there is a loss of payload of roughly 50kg.

The other cost, probably much bigger, is that you have to buy a Cirrus to get it (in the certified sphere). Relative to other aircraft models of comparable capability, age and condition, there is

  • additional purchase cost
  • additional depreciation

In addition, at the point where you are making the transition from an aircraft you have owned for a while and got well sorted and found to be very reliable, to the Cirrus, there is the cost of the exposure to new problems (this is the case with any change of aircraft). Cirrus aircraft are good by GA standards but are not problem-free. If you speak to the right people, off-forum, or perhaps pay $$ to read the Cirrus type forum, you hear reports of recurring issues in specific areas, which are not at all cheap to fix.

I also think the question EDDS-peter posed at the start of the current bit of the discussion was whether one would pull a chute even if one could apparently land on a runway.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

EuroFlyer wrote:

But does that make the argument for the chute any weaker ? In a given situation that is, in theory, equally recoverable both by chute and emergency landing, the chute is always the safer option compared to an emergency landing.

No, it’s not about making the arguments for a chute weaker or stronger.

Main arguments for chute are:
- There are situations, which are realistically only survivable with a chute e.g. engine failure in mountainous terrain, structural issues in flight…
- It might be easier for some pilots in the emergency situation of an engine failure to give up the plane in the air by pulling the chute rather than flying it to an off field landing w/o stalling
- It might be “easier” to make mistakes during an normal off field landing than to make mistakes during a chute deployment

Main arguments against chutes are:
- Some pilots tend to take more risks because they know they have a chute
- Chutes cost money that is ceteris paribus taken away from money we have for flight training. For those pilots that have limited funds, investing 20k into a chute means 150hr. less flight training – that’s more than an instrument rating!
- It might be easier for some pilots to do a “regular landing” off field rather than deciding to give up the plane while still in the air by pulling the chute

Just for the sake of this discussion. Let’s assume I have made another safety enhancing innovation:
It is an additional “emergency” tank with 10 gal capacity that can only be activated by entering a specific code on a keypad. If activated, a loud beep is played in the cabin every 30 seconds (i.e. activating it doesn’t prevent you from flying but is uncomfortable enough that you wouldn’t use this capacity for your normal fuel calculation).
In addition, the electrical system of the pane makes sure that the starter can only be engaged if this “emergency tank” is filled (i.e. you can’t commence a flight with this tank less than full). I’m absolutely sure such a device can be built for less than the cost of a chute.

Would you think, such a device would decrease the overall risk of flying more or less than a chute?

Germany

In Eddspeter’s situation he managed to land an aircraft with a seized engine without any damage.
As a “reward” for showing proper airmanship he is now facing a huge engine repair bill.

With a CAPS deployment there will alwats be damage. Likely the engine will be damaged as well by the prop hitting the ground…

Therefore it might be financially more beneficial to come down under the chute rather than making a perfect forced landing?

Interesting questions you bring up.

How do insurers regulate crashes after engine failures (it’s almost independent if the crash has happened with chute or without): Do they say, “the engine has been damaged before the crash therefore we do not pay for engine repair” or do they say “we pay the entire repair cost – doesn’t matter if the engine was damaged before”?

Germany

lenthamen wrote:

Therefore it might be financially more beneficial to come down under the chute rather than making a perfect forced landing?

From that angle, I would go for the chute, no point saving an aircraft then having to pay for cost of repair/retrieving from off-field, but obviously you have to save yourself first, landing in a field does look like easy bit when you have to deal with the rest

Last Edited by Ibra at 15 Jan 16:44
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Malibuflyer wrote:

How do insurers regulate crashes after engine failures (it’s almost independent if the crash has happened with chute or without): Do they say, “the engine has been damaged before the crash therefore we do not pay for engine repair” or do they

If the forced landing was due to a seized engine, they will pay for the repairs caused by the landing / chute deployment but not the engine. Had @EDDSPeter landed badly and caused sufficient damage to commercially write off the plane, he would have received the hull value of the aircraft. This is perverse, it’s pretty much an invite to cause as much damage as possible in order to get the hull value and get another plane….

EDL*, Germany

You can insure what in old English is called “betterment”, where you get more than the above, subject to limitations e.g. engine not past 2000hrs (since new or SMOH – who knows??). Visicover is one UK player doing this but I don’t know their small print right now.

The nightmare scenario would be an SR22 insured for an agreed value, the insurer decides to repair it, and you end up with a plane whose avionics have seen +20G or whatever (probably a lot more because the avionics are not sitting in those crushable seats) and then you end up with a plane which nobody who knows the history would touch with a bargepole.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

lenthamen wrote:

As a “reward” for showing proper airmanship he is now facing a huge engine repair bill.

This is a really interesting angle. I don’t fly a Cirrus, but my mindset is along the lines of: engine failure, the airplane belongs to the insurance company, all I’m interested in is saving my and my passengers lives’.

Now, IF (and that’s a pretty big if, where I do a lot of my flying), I could be reasonably certain to pull off a landing in some field w/o severely injuring / killing anyone aboard, sure, I’d go for that. Otherwise – pull.

On a more general note, I think the underlying problem is that we don’t / can’t train real off airport landings. What I mean by this is NOT taildragger bush flying, but get a C172 or similar into a meadow. Taking the airplane down to a couple of hundred feet is one thing, actually landing I imagine to be a very different one.

the airplane belongs to the insurance company

That may be under US law. I doubt it though because if say you are taxiing and break off a wigtip light, does the plane now belong to the insurance company? Obviously not.

In Europe the plane definitely does not belong to the insurance company following an accident. That happens only when you claim under the hull cover (IF you had hull cover) and they decide to write it off (“total it”, in US speak).

Another insurance related data point is here and I personally know the source of that report.

Hence I think most owners of something reasonably decent will think a bit before pulling the handle.

And if your back is not too great, even more so, because 20G straight up won’t do it any good at all.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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