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Would you consider adding a BRS parachute to your plane ?

But where does that ratio shifts in terms mission profile & hand piloting skills?
Cirrus type of flying have the worst combo in the latter vs say a super cub flyer who knows his strip/valley, surely that red handle is doing some magic?

So the comparatively low accident figures on non BRS planes may well stem from the fact that many people just don’t operate them into these conditions.

The figures quoted above (30 and 32 percent) were for Cirrus and A36 (Bonanza) which, according to my observation, are operated in similar conditions and for similar journeys. One could argue that the A36 attracts more pilots who enjoy and practice hand-flying, but my only evidence for that is anecdotal (one local pilot who replaced his Cirrus with an A36 for precisely that reason). I certainly don’t buy the caricature of Cirrus pilots lacking skill or experience.

Glenswinton, SW Scotland, United Kingdom

Interestingly the 172 we had for sale with the BRS, nobody wanted it because of the BRS safety advantage. I thought it would suit someone looking for such a safety advantage but I have been proved wrong it seems. Got a deposit in on it this morning that’s one less to worry about.

Buying, Selling, Flying
EISG, Ireland

Graham wrote:

It’s just marketing, but it works

Nope, having CAPS, wearing parachute, sitting on ejection seat is not marketing

Maybe marketing for causal sunny lunch to Le-Touquet but if you have to fly GA at the mercy of weather/environment (for other reasons than just flying) you will need one

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

The main thread on the Cirrus chute is here.

I don’t buy the “I have a chute; I can take a lot more risk” position, because you can exercise that option just once. Any more and you will likely become uninsurable. Whereas in a twin you can have as many engine failures as you want and nobody will care. Well, informed passengers might choose other options

To come back to a Cirrus example: In the US, Cirrus have said that nobody will face a rate rise after a BRS pull but that is patently not true in Europe. Here you go. I got some angry emails from “people close to Cirrus” after that, but it is 100% true; I know one of the syndicate members who got hit.

I wonder how many chute pull pilots are still flying afterwards, as a %.

I might choose to do some flights which I would not do today but that’s about it. Night flight for example is constrained by convenience and opening hours, etc. However, passenger (spouse/family) perception is dramatically different; many women know their pilot has a huge ego and will press on, and being able to override that and pull the handle when totally terrified is a big plus.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Ibra wrote:

Nope, having CAPS, wearing parachute, sitting on ejection seat is not marketing

You can’t compare them.

A personal parachute or ejection seat are eminently sensible systems that are used when engaged in particularly risky kinds of flying. In the military scenario this extra risk is rather obvious – someone may be trying to kill you. I would be interested to know – genuine question – whether military pilots are taught ‘pull early, pull often’ with regard to their ejection seats….. I suspect not?

CAPS is a new device that most of GA has always done without and most of GA will continue to do without. What is it mitigating against that cannot be sensibly mitigated against in other ways? Airframe failure – that’s about it – and airframe failure is so rare as to be almost irrelevant.

It is a great marketing tool. The thing about safety as a marketing tool is that gives one a shield – Cirrus can act all offended and take the moral high ground when someone points out that it’s about selling aeroplanes first and safety second. There is so much marketing BS flying around – the idea that it won’t cost you anything to pull….. well it’s gonna cost something to replace that crunched airframe, and it sure as hell ain’t coming out of Cirrus’s bottom line, nor that of your insurer! You always pay, one way or another. Pull a chute more than once and unless it was because the wings had fallen off I’ll bet you’ll never get insurance again. Then this ludicrous thing where they define everyone who descends under a CAPS chute as a life saved by the system, when clearly the vast majority of them would have walked away from a forced landing.

In summary, people have irrational approaches to risk and marketing plays on this. It’s like skiing – a few years ago almost no-one wore helmets and since what happened to Michael Schumacher almost everyone does, yet of course it is not suddenly riskier than it was. In the same way SEP flying is not suddenly riskier than it was before CAPS was developed, and we were all happy enough before CAPS.

Last Edited by Graham at 27 Nov 12:00
EGLM & EGTN

Graham wrote:

Airframe failure – that’s about it –

What about? (Those are all relevant to me) Mitigating engine failure over:
Unlandable terrain, where you can’t fly high due to airspace contraints (e.g. flying VFR in SW Paris for instance)
Uknown terrain (night)
A populated area (Certain instruments approaches lead you to very probably death in the case of engine failure if you don’t have “vertical landing” capacity – e.g. 25R at LFPN)
Water: I’d rather land vertically than “classic ditch”, even if the latter seems more fun / Heroic. Landing under the Chute, everyone can be completely ready for egress (pilot seat moved forward, seatbelts out, doors open, raft in pilots hands), rather than risking being upside down and having to get out. Landing under a Parachute, there’s a reasonable chance you are more likely to be spotted by ships (although might stretching a bit here).

Obviously, “if mitigate it” is reduce my mission capacity, that’s not very useful.

Well, to me those points are really about extending mission capability – which is fine.

I do water in an SEP, but not loooooong crossings. I don’t do un-landable terrain without either sufficient altitude or some sort of get-out plan and I don’t do low over built-up areas with no options. I don’t do night, principally because useful airfields don’t tend to be open at night in the UK – if they were then I would have a risk to ponder.

EGLM & EGTN

WilliamF wrote:

Got a deposit in on it this morning that’s one less to worry about.

That one sold quick… around 150k. Maybe the Landy color and seats were helping.

always learning
LO__, Austria

I think it depends. In the case of the slow-selling C172 with the parachute – in a slow aircraft with a low landing speed like a C172, the chute isn’t all that compelling and it uses up some of the plane’s already quite limited useful load, so it’s not such a great selling point. It’s a completely different proposition in a Cirrus, which has a much higher landing speed (and therefore an awful lot more energy to get rid of on touchdown) and is also more likely to be flown on longer flights over more varied terrain more frequently.

Andreas IOM

a slow aircraft with a low landing speed

Hence these types having much better survivability

BAS four point harnesses don’t reduce useful load but are much safer – especially in aircraft with low touchdown speeds

Oxford (EGTK), United Kingdom
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