Acrobatic pilot survives loss of wing

Parachutes and small aircraft crashes...

That parachute is impressive. I wish it was made law to have them installed on all small aircraft. Too many gliders and small aircraft get into trouble. I've lot count of the number of times I've heard of people killed in small aircraft crashes.

@nichomach: Thats sad news and its very recent news. Both wings at 800 to a 1000ft, that's horrific.

@Aldous: "these are illegal in the uk iirc."

If that's true then protests for legal action needs to be brought against the authorities for Culpable Homicide. Protestors need to use the Internet to generate public awareness of the madness of not allowing these kinds of safety features where possible. Some people in authority do not deserve their position of authority. They need to be discredited via protests and then thrown out.

@Iglethal and others

All hang/paraglider pilots fly with a reserve chute (apart from trainees who aren't far enough from the ground for a chute to deploy in time). So do all parachutists. Some of them will be pushing the edge of what their skill and equipment can safely do, and for them having to throw their chute is not too big a deal. But everyone has one, and everyone hopes they never need to use it. In the HG/PG world, various clubs organise zip-line sessions in sports halls so that you can train to get throwing your chute being a reflex action - the extra seconds can make the difference between living or dying.

It's not just pushing too hard that can cause this though. What starts off as a nice day can get nasty faster than you'd think. And it's not just your own errors that can get you into trouble either - some tit flying dangerously can seriously spoil your day too.

The downside of reserves is that you need to deploy them. The best friend of a friend of mine was killed this way - they reckon he probably survived the midair but was knocked out. He had ample time to throw his reserve as the damaged glider spiralled down, but being unconscious he couldn't, and it impacted too fast for survival. Similarly there are a number of cases of people trying to fly a damaged glider down when they should have bailed, and if they do throw their reserve then it's often far too late.

All that said, Iglethal's absolutely right that if you're going to fit a chute on an aircraft, the aircraft needs to have been designed to take it. A chute opening puts a big load on what it's attached to, so you need it bolted onto a structural point which can take that load. And the rest of the structure needs to absorb the load as well - there's no point having the chute taking the engine down gently whilst the rest of the fuselage breaks off and you plummet to your death. (I know of at least one hang-glider pilot who died by falling out of his harness when his reserve chute's deployed.)

Still and all, as far as legality goes I'd rather be illegal and living than legal and dead. So if I owned a light aircraft and retrofitting it with a ballistic chute *was* practical, you could count me in.

Parachutes - a bad idea

Iglethal has it right. Also, ballistic chutes encourage people to take the easy way out when it would actually be <i>safer</i> to fly on. Poor weather is a good example.

Is the Rans S9 actually approved for aerobatics? Looks like the wing folder under negative-g, so the pilot may have been overdoing it.

Arguments against parachutes

Are almost exactly the same as those used by the Royal Flying Corp's bigwigs in the Great War when they banned their pilots (the twenty minuters) from wearing them.

It's reactionary thought at its worst, and morally indefensible: you have conjecture on one side of the scales - that not having a parachute will discourage a pilot from going beyond his or her limit (VFR into IMC, say) - balanced against actual evidence on the other, namely that parachutes can save lives in catastrophic situations (engine out over mountains, or structural failure).

I can understand the prohibition on retrofitting these devices to existing aircraft, but not on those types where they're designed in from the start (Cirrus SR-20s etc.) I do hope this is actually the situation.

other potentional advantage

I asume there is a advantage for the peope on the ground too.

A plane that floats down under a chute is a far smaller danger then a plane that drops out of the sky balistic style.

For example there have been incidents of planes crashing in the public and if a chute equiped plane would come down towards people they would have time to get out of the way.

Also since there is a smalled chance of aditional damage on inpact the risk of fire is lower..

The example of this article did not burst into a ball of flames on "inpact" but the fire probbally started as a result of a broken fuel line near the hot engine and spread more slower giving still enough time for the pilot to exit the plane.

@Dick Kennedy

You're making the understandable but incorrect assumption that when the plane's broken enough for the pilot to be considering throwing a chute, the pilot still has any say over where the plane goes. Trouble is that when Mr Gravity says "Down" and Mr Wing says "I agree", you're SOL. In the HG, PG and parachuting worlds, there are numerous cases of people with perfectly good reserves plummetting to their deaths because they kept trying to get their wing/main chute flying.

It's certainly wise to consider when it's a good time to throw the chute. If you're at 5K then you might as well keep trying for a bit, bcos even at free-fall speeds it'll take you a while to get down. But at 1K or less, JFDI. But there's also the issue that if you throw the chute when things first go wrong, you've probably not yet reached terminal velocity in freefall, so the chute opening shock is going to be less. Since chutes can and do fail on deployment, and the chance of this happening is mainly related to the speed you're falling at, this is worth thinking about too.

You're also failing to consider the speed of impact. Mulder's guess that people could get out of the way in time is probably mostly not an issue - the chances of actually landing directly on someone in a light aircraft are pretty low, even during a display. But the chances of landing hard on something that subsequently collapses on top of the people inside it - say, a house or a school - are much reduced if you've got a chute attached. It's probably not going to do much good for the tiles, but it's unlikely to trouble the rafters.