Can't these things glide. Gotta wonder, pulling the handle at the first sign of trouble. What ever happened to the good old forced landing.
Was it a mechanical failure or fuel exhaustion?
Also gotta wonder how insurance companies view the parachute brigade. Can the aircraft be repaired or is it a write off after the chutes been deployed?
I'm not suggesting this has happened here, but there seems to be quite a few examples of pilots getting in over their head and using the get out of jail card of pulling the handle. I strongly suspect some pilots are happy to tread where angels fear to tread as they know they can pull the pin so to speak and parachute to "safety".