Early passenger jets & brake parachutes
 

Just wondered in the early days of passenger jets, which airliners were fitted with brake parachutes, was it regular for them to be deployed on landing and when did this procedure eventually stop?

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki...anteufel-1.jpg

Mid 1972 we had 3 Air Inter Caravelles in at Glasgow and all 3 streamed. There was also a TU124 who cocked up his landing, touching down well past the halfway point he streamed too and burst a couple of tyres by braking too hard.

In the case of the Caravelle (and presumably the Tupolevs, though I'm not 100% sure about those), brake parachutes compensated for the lack of reverse thrust.

So the answer to the second part of your question is that when reversers were eventually introduced (in the case of the Caravelle, with the VIR) then brake parachutes became redundant.

How long did they take to pack away each time - and who actually did this? Presumably they had to be qualified to pack these things away to ensure they deployed correctly next time?

I don't know but what I do remember was when, in the 1960s, Sidney Jackson of Irvins was trying to get us to fit them to our aeroplanes they were working on self-packing 'chutes. That would overcome the problem that after use the 'chute had to be released (and someone had to go and pick it up) or else dragged on the ground to the point where it was no longer airworthy.
We didn't like the idea as the pilots had no simple pre-flight test they could do.

I can't speak for other types, but a Caravelle's brake chute wouldn't typically be repacked on a turnround.

Instead, if one was likely to be needed on the next sector, a pre-packed chute would be carried in the hold and swapped for the deployed one, which in turn would be repacked once back at base.

Thanks for all the answers, they have helped fill in a lot of knowledge gaps

In my spotting days in mid 60s I only saw one parachute deployment at LHR which was on A Swissair Caravelle III which landed on 28R and maybe had a brake problem or landed long since it appeared to me to be going a bit faster than usual altho from my head on position hard to judge. Suddenly out pops the emergency braking shute and certainly helped pull the plane up sharply.

icannot imagine they were used routinely because of the disruption caused. LHR was less busy than today but still regularly had a whole procession of inbounds that ahd to be swapped to the other runway.

I also remember attempted to move.

The Caravelle III didnt have reverse rs and i suppose it could sometimes be a problem if it looked to crew like it would over run. In this case it stopped along way from the end and it was a warm sunny day-no slush snow ice etc b

I have a recollection of reading somewhere that a few SAS DC-9s/MD80 series were equipped with a braking 'chute, for use on snowy northern airfields with short-ish runways.

I can also remember an event at Gatwick in the early 80s (I think) where a US Navy A-3 Skywarrior aircraft landed (it was a VIP transport variant) and deployed its 'chute. The first that ATC were aware of this was when the a/c asked ATC if they should drop their braking parachute on the runway or adjacent taxiway!

I have never heard that and no DC-9 variant had a brake chute. They all had reverse thrust. The DC-9-21 was a high-performance short-fuselage DC-9 with the wing of the DC-9-30 and SAS was the only customer for this variant. Perhaps this is what you are thinking of.

saw an AF caravelle use the chute landing on 28R LHR - early - mid 70's

I once saw a BAe 146, no TR's, bouncing down the runway at the not very long LTN, nodding from nose wheel to main wheels and the amplitude getting larger as the end approached, where no doubt they were wishing for a brake parachute. Fortunately it ended without tears, just.

We've got the main brake parachute jets, which were the early Caravelles and the Soviet Tu104/124 (and the supersonic Tu144). The Caravelles were the original III, and also the VI-N. The VI-R (R for reversers, on the Rolls-Royce Avon turbojets) was introduced for the United Airlines order, as at an early stage in the evaluation the FAA said that braking parachutes blowing around US airports (or picking up runwayside taxy lights before being dropped) was not acceptable. They already had a bit of prior history of the first Caravelles operated into the US by South American operators.

There were a number of other quite significant features of the Caravelle that had to be redesigned for the 6R model for US certification; there had been no previous drop-down supplementary oxygen system and pressurisation failure was handled by a crash dive, portable O2 units for the cabin crew, and an altitude restriction of about 30,000 feet. Likewise the flight deck windows were found to be too small - they were the original De Havilland Comet design and the first cockpit assemblies had been actually built under subcontract by De Havilland at Hatfield. All these had to be fixed in the 6R.

The Soviet types never operated into the USA and certainly were never certified there.

In some cases the parachutes were repacked by the base engineer, who for a Caravelle licence would have done the training. However it would obviously extend turnround time so carrying spare packed chutes and substituting them woild be common. There would still be the need to restow. The base engineer was also responsible for going out in the van and collecting the released chute from wherever it had blown to. From a world of FOD concern it does all seem a bit unlikely.

The early South American Caravelles of Varig and Aerolineas Argentinas did long multi-stop flights and I would guess did not have multiple replacements on board, so I presume the engineer had packed ones in the stores ready to substitute as required. I believe that it was only deployed on landing if judged required, but was standard SOP for a rejected takeoff near V1.


Prior discussion and some interesting brake parachute stories https://www.pprune.org/spectators-ba...parachute.html