Cirrus parachutes into the Solent
 

Cirrus chute deployed Solent
 

https://www.islandecho.co.uk/plane-c...nt-near-cowes/

Nice to see both passengers were able to extricate themselves after splashdown.

Another one from Twitter :-

*GPS goes offline*
 

F**k me!!! Pull the ‘chute..

Lee-on-Solent based SR22 G-CTAM. Good to see everyone is OK.

They need to fit water pockets (or a disconnect) to that parachute. I'll bet that aircraft was dragged at some speed (leaving its occupants behind in the water), luckily they were in the solent so every wind direction was 'on-shore'. I had something similar happen during a RIB airdrop test when one of the parachutes didn't disconnect, capsizing the RIB and towing it towards America (from the Welsh coast) faster than the range tender could sail.

You have to wonder why, once the parachute had dragged the aircraft to the beach, nobody seems to have had the presence of mind to deflate it. Which then brings one to a second question: can Cirrus parachutes be recycled?

they rapidly become the property of the insurer. Iirc there were some problems with ‘rebuilt’ CAPS systems a few years back....https://www.avweb.com/ownership/cirr...-depreciation/
deployment renders a fair amount of damage to the monocoque as the straps are buried beneath the exterior painted layers..
in addition, the airframe is designed to impact the ground with the gear designed to absorb most of the impact and the seats have a collapsible honeycomb base to save your spine.
Hitting water will likely fuse much more damage to the belly and wings.
looking at the video; inverted with a G1000 full of seawater... someone’s’ premiums are going up!

The Police were clearly keeping people away. I can see your logic though.

You have to wonder when the plane inverted. Hopefully after the occupants got out.

What do you think?

Fortunately everyone was ok.

One has to wonder why these Cirrus’ are crashing, it’s such a new design but many are coming to grief?

There is also, of course, the added consideration of the aircraft landing on persons under parachute (fortunately it didn’t).

Interesting decision whether to pull the chute or attempt a landing on the water or beach.

Many have been no oil...no fuel...icing..the sort of thing that would be far worse without a chute and has been responsible for a fair few of them. Insurance jobs. Coupled with the fact they are the biggest seller so there is a lot of them. As an owner can attest they are almost idiot proof which of course can lead to complacency. Great machine to go places but still need to fuel plan, do your checks, avoid icing etc. With full tanks it has over 5 hrs of flying..well beyond most people's limits.

There is video of a Cirrus parachuting into the Pacific.


Touchdown at 1m 51s (44:00 on clock?)
In a few seconds the water on the RHS door was up to the windows due to the parachute dragging the aircraft.
The sole occupant exited the LHS and the aircraft was inverted and the cabin full of water at 2m 26s (45:06 on clock?).

It appears that therefore it was 65s to invert the aircraft and fill the cabin with water. I suspect that it would have been MUCH sooner if the leeward door had been opened instead of the windward door. I would presume that there was no way that the pilot could control the way the aircraft was pointing at touchdown.

Maybe Cirrus could improve the water landing performance in a bit of breeze? I can't really see how 4 people could have escaped.

Why not a bit of both?

Wind at the time was approximately 140/14 so an onshore breeze. Would the aircraft not have made more track distance toward the beach gliding and then deploying than deploying immediately, out over the water, and drifting landward at 14 knots? Maybe that's what they did, time will tell.

The cirrus training says always pull the chute unless directly over a field. That was drummed in. Their reasoning is that apparently survival rate so far is 100 percent under a cirrus chute. Not the case with their forced landings. I know i would pull the chute rather than ditch or land on a less than ideal beach such as that situation.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/florida-fa...ry?id=24734696

Sadly this is not an isolated incident. By contrast nobody on the ground has ever been injured by a Cirrus coming down under CAPS.

I am a Cirrus driver.

Cirrus engineers said, from 500 to 2000 feet AGL use the CAPS, above 2000 feet AGL that could became an option.

It needs a 'chute release, for activating after touchdown.
Was a big worry for Apollo missions.
I believe F111 had release too.

lsh
:E