Read this:

http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/4118454/ao ... _final.pdf

Chute advocate says "Engine failure! Chute saved them!". This is listed as "save #31" on the COPA web site.

Reality is different.

They had an oil pressure problem and the pilot flew on FOR ALMOST 3 HOURS!!! The engine indications grew continually worse the entire time, oil pressure failing inexorably towards zero. THE PILOT CONTINUED TO NOT TAKE ACTION. WHY?

Finally the engine failed. Do you suppose that perhaps, if the pilot didn't have a chute, he might have LANDED SOONER like the manual said to do?

The other aspect about this flight was the field in which it landed. A very open field. Had they glided in, there would have been no injuries (the pilot received minor injuries when hitting the ground under chute), and the plane would not have been totaled, either.



May we all have fields like this when our engine fails. Run this experiment 100 times, I bet there are 0 fatalities.

I am convinced had the above situation occurred to a Corvalis pilot, he heads to an airport much sooner and lands before his engine seizes. I cannot imagine flying an airplane where my engine is progressively worsening, which proves it isn't an indication problem, and not taking action until the thing seizes.

You can say the pilot was stupid, but the chute breeds this sort of stupidity by not allowing the self preservation instinct to kick in SOONER!

Mike C.

Mike,

I think your example is kinda funny. Last fall I was flying to Frederick MD from TN.
Due to low clouds my flight was delayed for traffic taking off and landing so I got to listen to ATC talk to a Piper for a long time. He had oil pressure fluctuations and he waffled about what to do. Apparently he had the fluctuations for a while and decided to continue to destination.

So no, I doubt the chute gives many pilots an excuse to continue on. It just gives an option to save the pilots life which was not present before.

In terms of the field, there is no way to know what the condition of the field is. He very easily could have landed on a field with a ditch big enough to swallow the nose gear and flip the plane. This would not have ended well.

Lastly, any pilot regardless of how they got there which considers trying to "save" the plane is a bad pilot in my opinion. The plane not matter how rare or special is not worth any life and increasing the risk to anyone on the plane in some misguided attempt to it is not a good pilot (again my opinion).

Tim

I agree with your focus on saving life. Do you feel any concern for trying to save those lives on the ground? The chute no longer leaves you to determine on whom you land, whereas flying the airplane all the way to to ground typically does. I'm not sure whether I think there's a hugely statistically significant issue, but to me it gets to the idea that nothing comes for free - somewhere there's a tradeoff.

Mike, if you were in a single engine plane, IFR and the engine quits, no warning, which would you choose? Pull the chute if it was there, or fly it down with say the help of Xavion? Or try and glide it down using only whatever the g1000 had available?
For this question lets assume you were already in the situation. And can't say I wouldn't do single IFR. Assume 500' ceiling everywhere.

I agree with your focus on saving life. Do you feel any concern for trying to save those lives on the ground? The chute no longer leaves you to determine on whom you land, whereas flying the airplane all the way to to ground typically does. I'm not sure whether I think there's a hugely statistically significant issue, but to me it gets to the idea that nothing comes for free - somewhere there's a tradeoff.

There is a higher occurrence of such behavior among Cirrus pilots.


Which leads to impaired judgment.

Cirrus pilots still end up dead a lot of the time.

The "saves" are mostly not as well.

The chute effectiveness is WAY less than is implied.


Dude, look at the picture.

Put 100 pilots in the same situation and I bet 100 of them glide in uninjured which is a better result than what happened to this pilot (he was injured on impact under chute).


Purposefully sacrificing the plane doesn't save the occupants, either.

It seems any plan of action that results in less damage to the airplane garners this weird criticism that somehow one favored the airplane over the people. Anything that reduces the chances of airframe damage also reduces the chances of human damage, too.

Mike C.

Regarding insurance on Cirrus, I wonder if, from a business perspective and not moral, the insurance companies even care about the psychological risk potential of the plane. (e.g., warm fuzzy feeling about flying in ice at night over the rockies with your family) They may see Cirrus as an extremely healthy/profitable market containing a lot of individuals that have money burning holes in their pockets. The more new low experienced people coming in to the market the better. A sort of pyramid if you will... Who knows, kind of a wild idea?

FWIW I have friends with a Lanceair ES that has a prop and an engine, both with minimal time, that were acquired from Cirri that had chute pulls. I got to fly it back this year from OSH.

It is impossible to exactly separate plane from pilot, relatively few accidents for hours flown, and the cause is not always known or agreed upon. I do think that analysis should be stratified by pilot type and proficiency in type, and mission flown. If accident rates are higher for a particular plane on a similar mission with similar pilots, that is worth digging deeper into.

For example many people believe early V Tail Bonanzas were not safe as an aircraft itself, as the tails kept regularly cracking off in flight, leading to an emergency AD.

Any statement said with absolutes is likely to be proved wrong. Minimal damage to the plane may mean the energy was transferred to the occupants. Cirrus and Corvalis are supposedly designed with crumple zones to absorb energy and protect the occupants which means significant damage to the plane may have no injuries.

With that stated, pulling a chute in the Cirrus is an almost 100% guarantee that the pilot will be able to limp away from the scene. Dead sticking a landing and being able to walk away is no where near 100% and in fact has a much higher incidence of a fatality.

Tim

This is exactly what Mike has been saying since he showed up on BT. Why keep arguing? The premise makes no sense.

According to Mike, if you aren't flying a Mits with a 6 pack you're a lousy pilot.

This is exactly what Mike has been saying since he showed up on BT. Why keep arguing? The premise makes no sense.

According to Mike, if you aren't flying a Mits with a 6 pack you're a lousy pilot.

So now you can measure the amount of courage in a pilots brain? I mean what powers of telepathy! I am sure the CIA would love to deploy this new capability to the field....

Mike actually applied the same exact get out of jail considerations to a second engine. Then he disparaged the chute because it may not save the airplane.

Any new safety device, until it is common will always generate the same critique. It encourages risky/stupid behavior. e.g. the stall warning systems encourages slow flight in the pattern; air bags and crash seats encourage going in/out of super short fields or landing off the paved field.

Give me any safety device you want and I can probably find a way to spin it so it is a negative. Until we have telepathic machines able to read minds or invasive surveys with extensive monitoring of peoples actual behaviors for analysis, we only have conjuncture. And at this point, everyone on this thread who has flown or is flying a Cirrus has disagreed with his basic premise. Since Mike's accusation applies to Cirrus pilots, we can probably safely make the assumption his premise is false as applied to Cirrus pilots. It may apply to anyone NOT flying a Cirrus, but there is no data to support such an accusation so I will skip it.

Tim

I think this is a stretch. Do you really think anyone pulling the chute is imagining a leisurely, slow descent back to Earth? I had an SR22 and if I had to pull the chute I'd be shitting my pants. C'mon!

Who knows where you'll land or if the damn thing will even work.

Well, now, that's a ridiculous argument. First, it was not likely a pull. A body to body midair at over 100 knots with an instant fireball likely killed, or at the least, knocked out, the occupants, and the chute was activated as a result of the fire and/or collision. And as you are sure to do if not addressed now, no, it doesn't bother me that a collision of well over 100 mph and instant fire would fire off the chute with out someone pulling the handle.


Seriously??? So in every airframe, other than a Cirrus, the fatals are not the pilot's fault? That really is news.

You're a smart guy. I was really impressed with your arguments on the SF50 thread concerning the jet. You're smart enough to know the chute is/has made a difference. So either you're allowing your bias to override your common sense, or you're yanking our chain. I'm truly not sure which.

But with a 36 month fatality rate of 0.82, and a 12 month of 0.32 deaths per 100k hours, chute pulls having gone up during that time, and the average plane in that class having 2.38 fatalities for the same time period, the numbers, at this point, to this date, are really all the argument that needs to be made. All the other is flack.

What's not flack is determining all the reasons the pilots in the airframe (did you see what I did there?) have become so much less fatal. Subjective, but constructive.