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.
That would suggest one should not land a Cirrus on grass – because there is a fair risk of a pothole. Yet e.g. Bosco does this routinely (he has indicated he won’t post on the topic).
Is there data on Cirrus landings doing the above? Normally, the nose gear breaks off in these circumstances.
Steve6443 wrote:
he 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.
To be fair, it was not the PIC but the PF. The PIC was not at the controls at all. Things were likely to have turned out differently if he had been.
To be fair, it was not the PIC but the PF. The PIC was not at the controls at all. Things were likely to have turned out differently if he had been.
Good point. Acc. EASA it is possible to be PIC while not even on the flight deck (but far away in a crew rest bunk) while simultaneously „delegating“ command to a suitably qualified relief pilot. A contradiction. Obviously this practice (being held accountable as PIC while not even present) has not yet been contested in court after something went wrong. I don’t think it would hold up.
Basically it’s (once again) the airlines saving money… some do actually put the relief pilots through a command course, others just go for the EASA min. requirements.
Sorry for OT.
Snoopy wrote:
Obviously this practice (being held accountable as PIC while not even present) has not yet been contested in court after something went wrong. I don’t think it would hold up.
This practise has been used “for ever” at sea so I would think the legal situation (whatever it may be) is clear.
A contradiction
Not really. It’s a common practice since way back, and comes from shipping. You delegate authority, not responsibility. Just think about it, delegating responsibility is a contradiction.
Ships and airliners are a bit different I’d say. What’s the cruise speed of a ship? 25 knots?
Peter wrote:
Yet e.g. Bosco does this routinely (he has indicated he won’t post on the topic)
Rightly so. Proof: this thread.
Ships and airliners are a bit different I’d say. What’s the cruise speed of a ship? 25 knots?
And what’s the cruise speed of a space ship? 25k knots 
and there is air ships, 50 knots ?
I don’t think cruise speed has anything to do with this. We have the same order of command on oil rigs. Cruise speed = 0 knots
I never saw it that way, interesting. Thank you for the perspective.
For me it’s still hard to understand how the PIC of AF447 can be responsible and held accountable for the crash when he wasn’t even at the controls. But, I get it, from the perspective highlighted by referring to ships and other vessels that have command hierarchy.
Pilot-H wrote:
Contrast that against the 100% success rate of CAPS when used within parameters.
Steve6443 wrote:
… 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.
These 2 quotes nicely illustrate exactly one of the main problems in these discussions: Chute-advocates often claim that the chute is “100% safe” as in all cases where chute deployments fails or led to serious injuries it’s not the fault of the chute but of the pilot.
Off field landings are also 100% safe if the pilots make no mistakes!
Unfortunately pilots – as all humans – have the tendency to make mistakes at the most stupid points in time. That is the reason why pilots get killed or seriously injured without and with chutes!
Pilot-H wrote:
The most recent examples are airbags, and prior to that safety belts in cars
The different with seatbelts and the current discussion on chutes is: Even the most convinced supporters of seatbelts would never have claimed “now that we have seatbelts we do not need any speed limits or even brakes in a car because seatbelts will eliminate every risk that is connected to driving once and forever…”
Not a single contributor in this thread so far has ever had any doubt, that if used wisely and as part of the option space in case of an emergency an chute can significantly contribute to increasing safety.
The whole discussion is around that “chute is the only solution and we must forget all other options in case of an emergency as the chute is so great” opinion expressed by some.
