I am sure you would not bail out of a glider if the ASI packed up? But that is exactly what happened with one chute pull!
I believe the event refered to is this one:
CAPS event #12, Apr 2007, Luna, NM
1 injured; (CAPS Save #10) - Factors: IMC cruise, climb to avoid weather, loss of airspeed indication, terrain warning in IMC; Activation: low altitude, inverted, 34 knots airspeed; Weather: IMC, icing; Landing: trees, mountainous terrain
From that summary, it's obvious that the actual scenario under which the pilot pulled was far from “Oh look! I've lost my ASI, I'd better pull CAPS” as implied in this post.
This isn't the first time someone has selected a single emotive element from the whole range of factors that made a pilot decide to pull and then pilloried him for his decision from the safety of an armchair.
The pilot lost control of his aircraft in IMC in mountainous terrain and pulled when inverted at 34 KTS airspeed when he got a terrain warning. One factor amongst all of that was a loss of ASI.
Given the situation in which he found himself, what else should he have done?
Should he have lost control in the first place? No, nobody should but people do and unarguably, having got into that situation, if he hadn't pulled he would have died.
Thankfully, he did pull and, as a result, he lived.
I am not trying to “convert the unconvertable” to the idea that CAPS needs to be an integrated part of emergencies handling in a Cirrus. I know that there are plenty of sky gods here who wouldn't have pulled in these, or perhaps in any other, circumstances. As I said in an earlier post: “your life, your choice”.
What I am trying to do is persuade new and inexperienced Cirrus pilots to do transition training with a good CSIP and, if possible, go to a CPPP weekend and learn about how to manage and, if necessary, use this proven life saving resource properly.
What worries me about all these CAPS bashing threads is that a newly minted, low hours Cirrus pilot may wander on here and be discouraged from learning about the system and, if it comes to it, be discouraged from using it by the comments in these threads.
I really pray that that doesn't happen: I gave an example of one experienced Cirrus pilot who died with a perfectly good parachute undeployed behind him earlier in this thread. Sadly, there have been far too many others.
Set against that are the lives of the 87 people that the system has saved.