Originally Posted by
Tinstaafl
I think the money spent on a BRS system is better spent on training & currency. By & large, training, currency & good airmanship negate the need. Look at the two greatest factors in GA accidents: Fuel starvation/exhaustion, and flight into IMC by an insufficiently qualified pilot.
Sorry Freelunch, but you are miles out (although as I'll explain in a moment, I still agree with your conclusions).
The well regarded GASCo 29 year fatal accidents study showed the following proportions of accident causal factors in the UK:
LoC VFR: 25%
Low flying and aeros: 16%
CFIT: 12%
Forced landing: 12%
LoC IMC: 8%
Mid-air: 6%
Ground collision: 5%
Airframe failure: 4%
Problem on low approach: 4%
Medical / suicide: 3%
Unknown: 5%
A proportion of the LoC IMC accidents will be from inadvertent flight into IMC - let's guess half. A proportion of the forced landings will be due to fuel mismanagement, let's guess half again. That puts your "two greatest factors" contributing to about 10% of fatal accidents.
The reason that I agree with your conclusions however are that of the rest - virtually all of the LoC VFR are due to manoeuvring at low level, and maybe a quarter of the LoC IMC. Ground collision is ground collision, so is a problem on low approach, so are mishandled low level aeros. Add all those up and you get about 64% of all fatal accidents - let's call it two thirds, are at low level where the parachute has not enough time to do any good.
Add to that mid-airs, a proportion of which will either kill you outright or disable the parachute, let's guess half again; also assume that some of the unknowns were too low-level for the chute, and some of the medical ones the pilot was unconscious anyhow from a heart attack or some other issue, so unable to pull the handle....
... And *maybe* in 30% of fatal accident scenarios, a BRS would have had value. That's 30% of a (statistically) 1 in 70,000 hrs event.
So, multiple the odds of being in a fatal accident circumstance, by the odds of the BRS then being able to help you - and I reckon you get about 1 in 230,000 chances, per flying hour, of it doing any good.
Fly 100 hours a year (quite a lot, but roughly what I do), then assume a 40 year flying career, and you get a 1 in 60 chance of ever actually needing that chute.
More likely for a typical keen PPL - 20 hours per year for 20 years, and it becomes around 1 in 600.
For the financial investment, I think that training, good aircraft maintenance, and maintaining currency - will show a far better return. It'll help avoid the other 2/3 of accidents! A good moving map GPS with current airspace and terrain databases, plus an aeroplane which happens to have a really loud and intrusive stall warned, will betweeen them offer far greater benefits, for a lot less money. So will instrument training, and keeping that training current.
BRS are mandatory in Germany on Ultralights - and if you look at their structural standards, and history of in-flight breakups particularly of high performance ultralights, that's appropriate. FAR-103 ultralights in the USA have no structural or maintenance oversight, so I'd probably want one on one of those as well. I have several times in my life insisted on a BRS before flying a spinning programme on an aeroplane that I couldn't bale out of.
But on any British microlight, or any aeroplane worldwide with a CofA, frankly they're decoration - and can cause problems themselves given that you have an explosive device which might potentially fire inadvertently following a survivable crash, making the situation worse, not better.
G