There's the issue that in many cases people tried to save the airframe rather than activate the parachute, knowing the aircraft was likely to be written off, and died doing so. It the same when the pilot is equipped with a parachute.
Yes, and this happens also in many other arenas. I've only done a bit of flying, but in my experience in speed sports such as Downhill ski racing and auto racing, you must be mentally able to switch your goals in a fraction of a second, from [win the race] to [save the run] to [save your life], without hesitation.
Sometimes you succeed in [save your life] and are still on-track / on-piste pointing in the right direction and are back to [win the race] in the space of a few seconds. Other times, you are on the sidelines, and hopefully not on the way to the field clinic.
But the switch in perspective must fully committed and absolutely not include [save the equipment], which is replaceable, even custom one-off gear. Anything else is over-constraining the problem and inviting disaster.
Beyond that, sometimes the [save your life] mode should include [sacrifice the equipment to save your life].
I remember an incident from one of my auto racing instructors. In a race, coming into a downhill turn (Diving turn at Lime Rock) at triple-digit mph, he found that he had no brakes. So he very rapidly pushed in the clutch, redlined the engine, grabbed 2nd gear, and popped the clutch with some steering input. The result was that he spun the car with enough control to crash into the barriers with the back end first. It was the end of that Porsche, but it would have been anyway, and he walked away.
Or, another guy I knew who was at logging school, 150' up pruning in a pine tree, realized that it was getting way out of balance and was about to get violent. He cut to just the right point, then threw the multi-$1000 chainsaw as far as he could away from him, and hung on for life to his harness and tree strap as the tree whipped back and forth until the oscillations dampened. He got kind of beat up, but climbed down and walked away.
It's key to be ready to completely change your mindset in a flash.
At the point a pilot is considering declaring an emergency, they should do so. Once they have declared an emergency, the insurance company owns the airplane, and the pilot should be focused on preserving as many lives as possible. This is as true for a mechanical emergency like a gear up landing as it is for every other kind of emergency.
That's assuming you have in motion insurance on your aircraft. I don't on my 152, the plane is worth so little we'd cover the airframe cost in 7 years of insurance payments.
This is indeed the early experience with BRS, which has been substantially addressed via training which started with some complex scenario-based messaging and later evolved to a more simplified “pull early, pull often” which has resulted in a bias in a better direction for human safety.
I'm reminded of a 2011 airshow crash of a Red Arrows T1 jet which, at least according to this account, [0] may have involved the pilot heroically making the decision not to personally eject, but to crash the aircraft away from crowded areas, perishing as a result. Of course, the aircraft itself had no parachute, unlike a Cirrus. (Also, I'm uncertain if that account of the incident is consistent with later investigation. The relevant quote is not from any investigation, but from a politician.)
There’s a huge difference in the danger to those on the ground between an 15000 lb fighter jet going hundreds of mph and a small 3000 lb airplane descending at about 15 mph (plus the wind speed).
It’s possible that the Cirrus could hurt or kill someone but I don’t think it’s happened in the about 100 parachute activations so far.
Of course there is, that's the reason I emphasised it.
> I don’t think it’s happened in the about 100 parachute activations so far
That's good, although there could be a selection effect there: pilots might be more hesitant to deploy it if they think the falling aircraft could do harm.
yes, i think the way i’ve heard it pitched is that deploying the parachute will result in “a bad day for the insurance company, and a great day for the pilots and passengers”
> Cirrus originally thought that the airframe would be damaged beyond repair on ground-impact, but the first aircraft to deploy (N1223S) landed in mesquite and was not badly damaged. [1]
they're almost always totaled by the insurance company. Easier than risking that they missed a hairline fracture somewhere and have the plane go down again.
Not necessarily. Frames can be repaired. Frame repairs and overhauls are common. If the damage is too extensive and expensive then you use it for parts.
Yes. The parachute has a pyrotechnic deployment mechanism that is consumed; I never saw a BRS sold in separate components, so you need to replace the entire package. The 10 year shelf life is coming from the pyrotechnic charge and the parachute material, they both age.
The parachute system will need to be completely replaced after usage no matter what. Activating the parachute involves firing a small rocket motor to pull it out quickly.
