In all seriousness, how much of that is applicable to an emergency parachute vs a sport jumper?
Everytime I go up in a glider I strap on one of these irvine (or similar) slimpacks.. They're repacked every 3 months, the aircraft is designed such that I have a reasonable chance of escape, but it's very much a last ditch. I understand the canopy is round, quite small, and the descent rate is "about equivalent to jumping off a double decker bus" i.e. expect broken bones. It's maybe the stuff of legend, but allegedly the gliding club did do an exercise where a few people were trained and jumped under supervision - with about 50% ending up in hospital, so they stopped that idea.
Very relevant. It's easy to believe the myths about round parachutes, but goes to prove that clearly the user has no idea what to expect, how to operaterate, how to land, what to do with wire or powerline landing, tree landing, water landing, or even how to do a parachute landing fall. How do you imagine we survived jumping round parachutes all these years? Expect broken bones? This is a cavalier attitude regarding use of a lifesaving device in sheer ignorance of it's function or proper use.
Having jumped and landed round parachutes, including round reserves myself, I can tell you that if 50% of the jumpers are winding up with broken bones...there's a serious issue. It's not with the parachute, either. Next time use proper training and that won't happen. One should never use a parachute that's insufficient for one's loaded weight...which includes the weight of the jumper/user in all his gear, and that of the parachute assembly as well. Jump with too small a parachute then one takes unnecessary risks...but this comes back to proper training. One has no business exceeding the weight limits for an aircraft, either. Same principle applies.
So, if all else fails, scramble clear, pull the red handle and hope. No reserve. If it doesn't deploy, you're stuffed, if it's not stable, you're stuffed, if, etc., etc! It would be useful to know how to kill the canopy - I'm thinking grab one set of lines and pull. I don't believe there's any steering on them..
No, don't guess. No, don't hope. No reserve? It is the reserve. You've got one shot at it; get it right. If it doesn't deploy, you're "stuffed?" Hardly. What to do about a floating pilot chute; it comes off the pack but fails to inflate in the burble behind your back? With proper training, one would know to reach back there and launch it into the slip stream, or dip a shoulder and let the slipstream take it off your back...not knowing that could kill you.
If it's not stable, you say...but it's you that should be getting stable...knowing how to do that is important. Knowing when not to wait is also important. Be unstable and you'll run into the problem I had during an unstable exit while carrying a pumpkin under one arm on halloween...a pilot chute bridle wrapped around one arm and a closed canopy; a total malfunction. Do this on a reserve, unstable, and wind up with a horseshoe malfunction that can't be fixed. You've just killed yourself by failing to get stable.
If it malfunctions you can't do anything about it, you say? Not at all true. Again, particular to the type of canopy you have...many pilot rigs now employ square ram-air canopies...it could be a line-over or it could be an end-cell closure...problems that can dealt with, and should be dealt with.
Not controllable? You mean you don't know how to steer the canopy? This is a big problem. It's nearly inconceivable that one would undertake learning to control an airplane, but strap on a parachute in complete ignorance..."I think I pull this little handle here."
This is aviation. We know. We don't guess.
That device is there to save your life. Isn't your life worth the time it takes to use it properly? Why wear it at all?
At the least generous 5/14 hardly qualifies as "nearly every". With a little generousity not even half fall into this category.
Most certainly do fall into this category. A sampling of Wikipedia's listing of these events, for example, cites the following:
As of April 2007, the CAPS has been deployed over two hundred times (some still under investigation):
1. October 2002, Texas: detached aileron Preflighting airplanes prevents needing to use panic button parachutes, and prevents ailerons from detaching in flight. Note that taken from that NTSB report, the following Cirrus statement is identified: The CAPS deployment is expected to result in the destruction of the airframe, and possible severe injury or death to the occupants.
2. April 2003, British Columbia: loss of control in turbulence (aircraft C-GEMC), 4 uninjured Putting the airplane in places it shouldn't be, such as in high winds at night over the mountains...eliminates the need to use the panic button. High winds over the mountains at night, incidentally, is exactly the wrong place to use a parachute.
3. April 2004, Florida: instrument failure in IFR conditions, 1 uninjured In the real world, we fly the airplane down and train for partial panel situations. A pilot incapable of doing this, who goes into conditions beyond his capabilities based on having the panic button parachute in hand...should never have been there in the first place. An improper preflight failed to drain the static lines, resulting in instrument problems.
4. September 2004, California: loss of control in high-altitude climb above clouds, 2 uninjured Again, a situation that the pilot should never have been in; one flies beyond one's capabilities, one uses the panic button...one has unnecessarily gone where one shouldn't have been and used what didn't need to be used...when the airplane could simply have been flown to a landing. Again, we're not even talking about a broken airpalne here...just a pilot who elected to deploy a parachute on a perfectly good airplane. This brain surgeon-rocket scientist flew into a Level 5 thunderstorm...not really the best place to fly, shows poor judgement, and certainly a very poor place to deploy a parachute canopy.
5. January 2005, California: parachute deployed above design limits, pilot fatality (unknown if intentionally activated) Didn't do this guy a lot of good, did it? A departure in icing conditions and IMC by a very low time pilot who lost control in ice...shouldn't have been there, was beyond his capabilities, didn't help him...and would he have made the flight without that useless panic button there to lure him into a dangerous area?
6. June 2005, New York: pilot incapacitated from undiagnosed brain tumor, 1 injured A possibly valid use, and one of the few in which the parachute didn't lure or goad the pilot into doing something stupid. This case is clearly by far in the minority. The pilot lost control, but had recovered control of the aircraft by 1,700' before deploying the parachute and making a forced landing under canopy in a river, fracturing his vertebrae.
7. January 2006, Alabama: loss of control after pilot flew into icing, 3 uninjured Once again, pilots who flew beyond their own capabilities and that of the aircraft, relying not on airmanship, not on flying a good airplane to a safe landing, but upon the panic button.
8. February 2006, South Dakota: pilot reported disorientation, 2 uninjured Pilot disorientation, again. A common theme. Not a broken airplane...just pilots who shouldn't have been there in the first place, flew beyond their own capabilities, and who then used the panic button to get back down. Did these individuals fly to a place they should never have gone because they had the security of the panic button? A common theme with the vast majority of the deployments.
9. August 2006, Indiana: parachute deployed three miles from departure end of runway, aircraft landed in retention pond, parachute was deployed by a passenger because the pilot had fainted, pilot fatality, 3 passengers injured While wikipedia states that it was pilot incapacitation, it wasn't. The aircraft was loaded out of CG, the pilot repeatedly stalled the aircraft, the pilot asked the passenger to pull the handle, and the pilot was killed and the passengers injured. The pilot struggled to fly the airplane and badly botched it into a fatal mishap...there was nothing wrong with the airplane other than pilot error in a poor CG with an overloaded baggage compartment. Panic button and an unnecessary crash and loss of life...in fact it wasn't the CG which caused the crash, but the deployment of the CAPS system, and a pilot who couldn't handle the airplane. Chalk it up once again to the same majority of the incidents...pilot error, unnecessary use, and a system that took the pilot to places he wasn't capable of going and to a place where he never should have been.
10. September 2006, Jamaica: pilot activated parachute under unknown circumstances, 4 uninjured VMC, pilot report of engine trouble, and lucky they lived at all. Panic button applied at 4,500', and a subsequent landing in a ravine. In the real world, when we have a functioning airplane, we land the airplane, rather than abandoning control to a parachute attached to the airplane, which the manufacturer states is expected to destroy the airplane, and possibly cause severe injury or death to the occupants...however this falls in the same category as the vast majority of other CAPS deployments...a panic button deployment.
11. September 2006, Colorado: Plane destroyed with 2 fatalities after reports of icing problems at 14,000 feet. A preliminary report from the NTSB contains the sentence "A witness in the area observed a portion of the fuselage being drug by the deployed aircraft recovery parachute." According to the NTSB...The pilot's improper in-flight planning and decision making resulting in an inadvertent encounter with severe icing conditions during cruise flight and subsequent loss of aircraft control. Contributing factors include the pilot's failure to obtain a weather briefing, the thunderstorm, conditions conducive for structural icing, and the pilot's failure to deploy the parachute recovery system. The Cirrus isn't approved for flight into known ice, nor into thunderstorms...not is it advised for low time pilots.
12. February 2007, NSW, Australia: Fuel line pressure sensor connection cap separated and loss of pressure stopped the engine. After an approach to a freeway forced landing, CAPS was activated, the rocket fired, but got tangled with the empennage resulting in parachute undeployment. The plane impacted ground in nose down attitude seriously injuring both occupants. The pilot was setting up for a landing and pulled the panic button anyway...it failed, partially entangling with the empennage, and the airplane veered away from the road, resulting in injuries and damage. Chalk it up to another failure...both to deploy properly, and a deployment that never should have been made in the first place...again, part of the vast majority.
13. April 2007, Luna, New Mexico: The pilot experienced spatial disorientation following loss of the airspeed indicator. After the terrain warning went off, CAPS was activated and the plane came to rest in a forested area. A low-time, inexperienced pilot out of his depth, in a place he shouldn't have been, who lost control. Not because of the airspeed indicator, as that had returned and was functioning when he applied the panic button...he was simply losing control because he wasn't capable and shouldn't have been there in the first place...like most of the other deployments...which are, in fact, the vast majority (as I correctly stated before).
14. August 2007, Nantucket Island, Mass: Two people aboard, one suffered serious injury after their Cirrus made a parachute landing on Nantucket. FAA spokeswoman Holly Baker said the Cirrus aircraft apparently was trying to land at Nantucket under visual flight rules when the weather deteriorated. She said the pilot used the plane's parachute system and the Cirrus made a hard landing, apparently hitting the guy wires of a LORAN tower in the village of Siasconset, about five miles northeast of the Nantucket airport. Surprise, surprise...same story, different day, pilot beyond his capabilities in a place he shouldn't have been, lost control, used the panic button...again. See the trend? Pilots resorting to the panic button when they shouldn't have been there in the first place...over, and over, and over again. Nothing new here, but in the vast majority, all the same.