Peter wrote:
And if your back is not too great, even more so, because 20G straight up won’t do it any good at all.
So its a bloody good job they have but in seats to absorb the forces. Obviously the landing gear is a big help as well since it takes a lot of the force. Even at the low speed of a vertical landing there is a lot of force to dissipate.
Nothing like as much as there is landing at at 60 KTS in a forced landing. Of course. That’s why the parachute has been so very successful at saving lives.
I can’t find it right now but with the seats it is something like 20G. Back injuries have been documented – example from the very originator of the “pull early pull often” catchphrase.
So the decision, given plausible forced landing options, is not as clear as may be claimed.
After all, we can all land on a runway (well, usually) 
Perhaps @sdbeach can educate everyone on the current policy.
Peter wrote:
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.
That’s just a figure of speech, isn’t it?
It is pretty obvious from this thread that in a community that has grown up without parachutes, and has been embedded in a culture where they did not exist, has a high level of resistance against using them.
I think that the catchphrase “pull early, pull often” primarily serves to address that balance. The most important thing is that the FIRST thought should be – should I pull? and only if there is time for reflection you should do something else. Spatial disorientation and aircraft is accelerating towards Vne – pull. Loss of control? You already f**ed up, you think you can fix it? Pull instead. EFATO and high enough? pull. In all these situations, hesitating for a few seconds could kill you. All these scenarios replace a next-to-100% chance of death with a less than 1% chance of death.
The engine failure at altitude is a bit of an outlier here. If you have time – of course it is a good idea to assess other options, which can include gliding into a known good (flat and long) field, or gliding towards the valley and down to 1000 AGL to control better where you can come down. I certainly wouldn’t pull at 15,000ft after an engine out.
But there is likely to be a point where, unless you can be sure from 700ft that you will make a good field, where pulling the chute will reduce chances of death and serious injury from 10% to less than 1%. DO IT!
And (sorry that sounds like a humble-brag) I write this as someone who successfully put a PA28 in a field after an engine failure at 900ft AGL on base leg. Because when I did it, I was an instructor teaching this stuff every few days, so if there was ONE point in my flying career where I could pull that off, it was then. Now? not so sure.
As of 18 December 2018, CAPS has been activated 98 times, 83 of which saw successful parachute deployment. In those successful deployments, there were 170 survivors and 1 fatality. No fatalities have occurred when the parachute was deployed within the certified speed and altitude parameters, and only one anomalous unsuccessful deployment has ever occurred within those parameters. Some additional deployments have been reported by accident, as caused by ground impact or post-impact fires, and 19 of the aircraft involved in CAPS deployments have been repaired and put back into service.20
Post 2011, the year of their highest fatality rate to date, Cirrus has experienced an increase in CAPS deployments coinciding with a steady decrease in fatal accidents, giving them one of the best safety records in the industry and less than half the industry average. This was attributed to a new approach to training, particularly in when to deploy the parachute system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Airframe_Parachute_System
I’m not a huge Cirrus fan, never have been, but I do own one and have for 3 years. (after all it is a very good aircraft) If I should find myself unable to make a runway I expect I will be pulling that chute early and will very probably survive along with my passengers. I also fly an aircraft without. Should I be unable to make a runway in that one. Well I will be taking my chances along with my passenger if I have one. Probably I will survive, but we will be at more risk.
Peter wrote:
I can’t find it right now but with the seats it is something like 20G. Back injuries have been documented – example from the very originator of the “pull early pull often” catchphrase.So the decision, given plausible forced landing options, is not as clear as may be claimed.
After all, we can all land on a runway (well, usually)
Perhaps @sdbeach can educate everyone on the current policy.
A couple of points:
The seats on a Cirrus are designed to withstand 26G, however – and this is something that really winds me up – it will only work IF the owner / renter follows the rules. The number of times I have seen people kneeling on the seats in a Cirrus has made me want to scream. If you kneel on the seats, you risk damaging the crushable cores under the seat which provide part of the crash protection. At the same time, to get the best protection you really need to be strapped correctly to your seat. Some people have the cross strap tightened across their chest – what’s that about? Or conversely, they don’t tighten them at all – no good having the straps loose. Finally, in some of those incidents listed, back injuries were also sustained by the chute being not fully deployed.
Secondly, you are equating landing in a field to landing on a runway. Nothing could be further from reality. I have been trying to find a picture of an aircraft in a field where the pilot only realised after the event that the field was riddled with deep ruts – he admitted that he was extremely fortunate about not hitting one because he’d not seen them at all. So in that case, luck was the deciding factor, not the skill of the pilot. If I find it, I’ll post it here.
I would concede that, if landing is assured (100%) then you can leave the chute in.
That is, if you know for sure you will make it to the runway. But that is a case which – apart from an engine failure in the very vicinity of an airport and high enough – doesn’t seem to be a scenario that can be taken as a rule.
Because what you don’t want to happen is people dying in a botched landing a couple yards before the runway because they misjudged “landing assured”, or try the impossible turn etc and then find themselves out of options below 500ft.
And let’s face it – that will happen a lot when you (as Cirrus) even make the distinction between procedures ‘close to airports’ and procedures ‘not close to airports’.
That’s why they train to pull the chute wherever you are and in whatever situation.
And I think they are right.
The thing with the Cirrus is it’s a fairly high performance aircraft, with relatively small wheels, and a nosewheel which is basically a bent bit of wire with a wheel on the end, clearly designed to be primarily operated off a long hard surfaced runway or at least decent quality grass. Over the fence speed is around 75 knots (faster than motorway speeds) and touchdown is around 60 knots (about typical motorway speed).
It’s a world of difference doing a forced landing in, say, an Auster (over the fence speed 45 mph, touch down speed somewhere in the low 30s) with reasonably large wheels and a low wing loading, with very steep (in other words accurate) approaches possible, and a high performance aircraft with a higher wing loading and small wheels where you need to be going 75 knots to have enough energy to flare and land properly, and which has a much shallower approach angle. At some point, the approach and touchdown speed gets high enough that the odds of an outcome with no injuries become better using a parachute if you have one, and I rather suspect the Cirrus is on the ‘better odds when parachute is used’ side of that line.
the Cirrus is not designed to fly slow and land on bad terrain. Bad rudder authority at low speeds and nervousness adds to that. It was never necessary to be able to, as it was designed around the chute.
EuroFlyer wrote:
Bad rudder authority at low speeds …. It was never necessary to be able to, as it was designed around the chute
I cringe when I hear that statement. It has no basis in anything. The SR22 is a quite conventional aircraft, with quite good slow flight characteristics (if rather high sink-rates), and while the chute was used to avoid having to do a full spin evaluation during certification, that was the ONLY item it was used for and not the REASON for it.
And given that it is perfectly landable in 20-25kt crosswinds (max demonstrated is 21kt, which above the 12kt/20% of Vs0 required for certification) it is also, quite simply, utterly wrong.
