MJ
I could pretend ignorance and ask whether you are just winding everybody up, but I suspect you are being serious.
Which is really counterproductive in this case. As Fuji says, without a raft you are
stuffed. The
default outcome will be
death. For you and your passengers, plus any children who will die a lot quicker than you (unless they are the increasingly common super-obese British kids, some of whom - thanks to their parents feeding them rubbish - don't need a liferaft).
Unless you get lucky and ditch next to a vessel, whose captain is awake. Most commercial shipping runs on GPS-driven autopilots so this is not guaranteed.
You've got to remember that the plane
will sink, within a few minutes. Unless it is a pressurised type, and you close the door behind you
it will virtually always be gone by the time any conventional S&R arrives. So, of the cases where nobody was rescued, nobody knows whether they hit the water at -10,000fpm in a spiral dive or whether they ditched and got out fine and then died. On non-AOC piston GA flights, the wreckage tends to be left down there. Quite a thought!
Whereas with a raft you have a
chance. The default position is that you will get in and survive. OK, it may be duff, or it may be mishandled and lost, etc. But the chance is that it will open just fine. I gather that the chance of a regularly serviced raft failing is about 1-2%.
As for the operating cord, you need to pull out about 4-5ft before it triggers it, and that is fine for attaching the loop to e.g. the yoke nearest the exit door, and then pulling it out, with the raft already wholly outside the plane. This is a matter of knowing this, and also briefing pasengers on it (in case the pilot is incapacitated).
There are gotchas with rafts.
Some d1ckhead might activate it inside the plane, despite having been told by the pilot that that will be certain death for all. That's why I keep a knife, stowed away in a very accessible place (to puncture it).
Also some are too heavy for a lot of people to lift; the well marketed RFD raft (Transair, etc) is no doubt of very good quality (all RFD stuff is very good) but it is too heavy for smaller people to move about. I had one on loan and could only just move it on/off the back seat. I carry a U.S. one from Survival Products, from Harry M.
One needs one with a canopy, but they cost a bit more.
It needs to be looked at, every couple of years say, and this is about £200 at SEMS, Basildon.
You have to say NO when some flying club asks to borrow it for their next fly-out to LTQ, because if it comes back even remotely looking like somebody has a look inside, it has to go back for an overhaul; another £200. But then would you lend your parachute to somebody you don't know, to chuck in and out of the back of a PA28?