Light aircraft and lifejackets

[Rainboe]

Can I ask those who are experienced light aircraft and over water flyers, what sort of lifejacket you recommend? I can see advantages of automatic inflation units, but coming-to in water inside the cabin with the jacket blowing up maybe isn't such a good idea! So manual gas cartridge inflation or automatic?

[Mark1234]

Rainboe,

No experience of lifejackets in light a/c, but plenty with boats. For what it's worth that suggests that the automatic ones are somewhat prone to spontaneous inflation, and maintenance type issues - the triggering mechanism can be a bit sensitive. Granted there's usually more water flying around in boats than 'planes. My personal inclination would be manual gas, closely followed by plain old 'blow in the tube'.

[Pilot DAR]

I always wear a manual inflating life jacket for flight over water, and during float flying in particular. Automatic inflation is a hazard in the cabin. The Mustang lifejacket I have can be changed between manual and automatic by the wearer. I also carry an automatic "stick" which lives in a waterproof bag, but once immersed, inflates into a life jacket collar. I could take it with me, give it to a passenger, or throw it out to someone else.

Bear in mind, that if you're flying over water cooler than you would choose to swim in, a lifejacket might not be enough. Wear a proper insulated floater suit. There are many types, each with specific characteristics, choose carefully, and get the right one.

If you think that you might have to escape into the water, figure out what the cabin will be like upsidedown in the dark. Can you feel your way out? Do you know where to kick to get the windshield or side window out?

There's lots to learn...

Pilot DAR

[BackPacker]

This is the one I have.

AFE GA-2 aircrew lifejacket : Default - Airplan Flight Equipment

And yes, manual inflation.

The only reason for having an automatically inflated vest on a sailing yacht is that if you were hit by the boom or something else, and thrown overboard unconsciously, it would inflate automatically and keep your head out the water so you can breathe.

The chances of being thrown overboard, unconsciously, from a light aircraft are nil. If, after a ditching, you are unconscious you don't stand a chance with or without lifejacket. And if you're conscious an inflated jacket is going to restrict your ability to do anything (exit the aircraft, climb on the wing, help someone, swim a short distance, climb in a liferaft) immensely. That's apart from the consideration of having your vest automatically deployed in a submerged cabin.

[Fright Level]

Definitely manual inflation. Even the airlines remind you "do not inflate until you have left the aircraft" for reasons stated above.

Buy them from a chandler, the same items are usually much cheaper. I bought exactly the same as above but from Marinestore when they had an offer for £50 each vs £100 from "aviation specialists".

[Final 3 Greens]

Operating around the UK, life vests are not enough.

An immersion suit or raft is required to avoid death by exposure, for most months of the year, unless rescue is very quick. So how practical is it to provide/use one or the other?

In managing the risk, reducing the time exposed to the risk is probably as important as having the life jacket.

Having said all that, manual inflation is the best choice and my preference would be for an aviation specific vest, such as a 'slim' or 'waist' type fitting, to minimise the interference with normal flying activites. These are more expensive, but IMHO, worth the extra cost - also I would argue less likely to snag on the door framce etc when evacuating.

[gasax]

I'd second the suggestion of an immersion suit, a modern helicopter transit suit with built-in insulation will give in excess of 2 hours even in the northern North Sea.

Manual inflation lifejacket, but most importantly it MUST have a crotch strap. Without that strap it is likely to be useless.

[Rainboe]

Thanks everybody, very useful. We are talking light aircraft doing several cross channel trips to France from Kent and Hampshire to Cherbourg and Channel Islands. A manual jacket will do. This is for occasional fun use across busy shipping lanes, so an immersion suit is not desired.

[robin]

Thanks everybody, very useful. We are talking light aircraft doing several cross channel trips to France from Kent and Hampshire to Cherbourg and Channel Islands. A manual jacket will do. This is for occasional fun use across busy shipping lanes, so an immersion suit is not desired.

Do you think the aircraft knows that it is only the channel and that the flight is for 'fun'? The guys who died last year were only 8 miles offshore but without an immersion suit only one lucky one made it.

For Hamphire to Cherbourg, or Penzance to Scillies, or Wales to Ireland the best to have is lifejacket, liferaft and suit. There may be issues in some aircraft where weight and balance means a raft cannot be carried.

I was at a lecture recently where it was said that the rescue services like the lifejackets we wear - it makes it easier to find and recover the bodies.

[cessnapete]

Lifejackets

A few years ago I had the misfortune of a swim in the Med after engine failure in a Mooney. We had made a last minute descision to cut a corner and transit 110nm of sea.
We wore Transair manual inflation jackets,(worked perfectly) but carried no other location devices as we had not planned any overwater flying excepting for the last Cap Griz Nez-Dover to UK. We ditched about 12miles from Italian coast, midsummer with outside temp of 30+
Helicopters were in the vicinity within 20mins but were unable to find the two of us although passed within a mile or so several times. Luckily an Air/Sea rescue boat passed within 150 mts. of us and we were pulled on board.
We were in the warm Med for only 45mins but were starting to shiver uncontrollably.

From this experience if you plan to fly overwater, even the short Channel crossing, expect and be equipped for the worst case.
Always carry a PLB with GPS, visual location devices if pos. flares/sea dye, liferaft, and wear your lifejacket. Without an imersion suit in UK waters your survival chances are heavily reduced.

[BackPacker]

On the one hand I have to agree with robin, that even with the shortest Channel crossing (Dover-Calais) you are not always in gliding distance of land, and have to be prepared to ditch if something goes wrong. And with the water temperature there, you will at the very least suffer from severe hypothermia before the rescue services reach your position.

But on the other hand, this whole private flying thing is a security trade-off. You cannot buy every imaginable gadget that will increase your chances of surviving every imaginable threat. Because, realistically (short of flying commercially) that will mean:

Twin engines
Dual GPS plus the usual primary and standby com/nav equipment, Instrument rating
Deicing capability
In-cockpit weather, stormscope
TCAS or PCAS (Zaon XRX-like), preferably fed into the GPS moving map
Mode-S
BRS and a personal parachute
Bone dome
ELT in the aircraft plus a PLB on your body, all properly registered of course
Immersion suit over a nomex flight suit, gloves
Life vest with spray hood, crotch strap and water-activated light
Life raft
Signaling mirror, rescue knife, rescue whistle
Shark repellent, bear rifle
Water dye
Flares
Smoke signals
Emergency rations and water
First-aid kit
...and probably a dozen or more things I didn't think of.

And of course the training and currency to use all this properly. ME, IR, maritime, polar, desert, jungle survival training, egress/parachute training, firearms training, unusual attitude/spin training and whatnot.

This is clearly unrealistic for most PPLs and GA aircraft. So you have to look at the level of risk you're willing to take, and the budget (both monetary and space/weight) you have to mitigate the most relevant risks, and then make a decision.

Or let's look at it another way: your chances of dying in a traffic accident on your way to the airfield are probably worse than your chances of dying from ditching/hypothermia/drowning following an engine failure over the Channel.

[PompeyPaul]

From my own POV

For cross channel flying you need a:

1. Aviation life jacket (one you select when to inflate)
2. Life raft

I wouldn't go cross channel flying without either of those 2 pieces of equipment. If I had to drop either, I'd drop the life jacket every time and go with the life raft. That's just my own risk assessment, but I'm not a professional H&S guy.

Or let's look at it another way: your chances of dying in a traffic accident on your way to the airfield are probably worse than your chances of dying from ditching/hypothermia/drowning following an engine failure over the Channel.

At the CAA safety briefing evening I ask the representative about this. He refused to answer but said the information was out there to work out, and I remember a discussion on pprune about this.

I did find a website that reported GA was 20x more dangerous than driving. I can't find that website anymore, although

National Statistics Online

The national statistics offics informs us that there were 48 fatalities per 100 million vehicle km.

The CAA representative said the GA had 1 fatality per 10,000 hours (for aircraft, Gryrocopters were 1 fatality every 2,500 which dashed my taste for gryo flying).

I work on a cruise speed of 100kts average, which means for GA 1 casualty every 185200 km. Multiply by 48 to get number of KM for GA casualties and you end up with 48 fatalities in every 88896000 GA KM.

So for GA it's 1 fatality every 88,896,000 GA KM
For cars it's 1 fatality every 100,000,000 Vehicle KM

So GA is around 10% safer than driving.

Of course, go drink driving, flying VFR in IMC etc and those average QUICKLY and very RAPIDLY change.

Also, obviously, this is just talking about deaths, losing arms & limbs etc is something else. I'd be suprised if the rough statistical average didn't translate though...

[RatherBeFlying]

Immersion Suit, PLB and Lifejacket

These three are the vital items. Having spent time in cold water (white water canoeing), I absolutely would insist on an immersion suit to keep you alive long enough for rescue services to find you.

One lady slipped off a wing into the Hudson and was almost lost to hypothermia -- had the rescuers not been already on the scene, she would most likely not have made it.

A PLB with GPS capability will have them looking in the right place. A signal mirror and dye pack are nice to haves, but the PLB is the key piece to their finding you promptly.

Some immersion suits may have floatation capability, but lifejackets help keep your head above the waves. Yes, crotch straps make a big difference.

Close to shore and rescue services a life raft will not make that much difference; also in many GA ditchings, life rafts are not successfully deployed. However life rafts are easily spotted, but I would still go first for the PLB.

See EQUIPPED TO SURVIVE - Outdoors Gear, Survival Equipment Review & Survival Information for real world testing and experience.

[bookworm]

The CAA representative said the GA had 1 fatality per 10,000 hours

Too high. But your sums have gone wrong somewhere anyway.

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/cap780.pdf

The overall reportable accident rate [for for small conventional aeroplanes engaged in non-public transport operations] for the period [1998-2007] is 179.0 per million hours
and the fatal accident rate is 11.7 per million hours.

The fatality rate from the graph in that publication is between 15-20 per million hours.

The fatal accident rate is therefore probably of the order of one fatal accident per 10 million nm, or 1 per 20 million km.

Road Casualties in Great Britain, Main Results: 2007 reports 2714 fatal accidents in 510 billion vehicle km, or about 1 per 200 million km. That's about a factor of 10 less than GA.

[Fuji Abound]

Ditch the jackets - for any serious over water flights in these climes they will only keep the body afloat until it can be retrieved.

Either buy an immersion suite (a dinghy dry suite is a better bet) or a raft or both and make sure you know how to get into the raft.

Thats it.

[bjornhall]

Nevertheless, survival time in cold water, without an immersion suite or a raft, is still better with a life jacket than without one. One would feel awfully silly expiring from hypothermia after 15 mins when the helicopter arrives after 20, if with a jacket one would have lasted 25...

Then it's up to the pilot whether or not they want to undertake the crossing with only a life jacket... I see no problem with people taking such risks, as long as they are aware of them. Normally an engine failure in a single means "could be dangerous, but usually a mere inconvenience", over the cold sea with only a jacket it means "most likely fatal". If one likes those odds, fine then.

[Fuji Abound]

Nevertheless, survival time in cold water, without an immersion suite or a raft, is still better with a life jacket than without one.

The jacket will keep you afloat, it doesnt reduce the risk of hypothermia. In that far, it is better than nothing, particularly as with clothes you may not be able to tread water for as long as it takes to die of hypothermia.

I see no problem with people taking such risks, as long as they are aware of them.

Nor no I, but if there are passengers they usually have no idea of the risks to which they are exposed, hence my point that since the jackets will probably not do the passengers much good a raft would seem a sensible precaution for their sake, but an informed risk a pilot without passengers may be happy to take.

[BackPacker]

The fatal accident rate is therefore probably of the order of one fatal accident per 10 million nm, or 1 per 20 million km.

Since I brought up the subject, I might as well defend my stance. I was not talking about the generic GA accident rate vs. car accident rates, but the specific GA accident of having an engine failure out of gliding distance of land, and dying either because of impact forces during the ditching, drowning or hypothermia. How many GA accidents fall under that category, and how many engine failures, forced landings, CFIT accidents, midairs, landing mishaps and such do happen over land, where all the money spent on life vests, exposure suits and life rafts is not going to make a difference?

So if you have a thousand euros to spend, arguably, it should be spent on a safer car, car driver training, emergency/forced landing practice, IMC training and maybe some other things (an Allen Carr book perhaps) before acquiring a life raft makes sense for the average GA pilot. Looking at pure cost/benefit, that is.

At least a PLB will help you in case of a forced landing over land too.

The jacket will keep you afloat, it doesnt reduce the risk of hypothermia.

Yes it does, but indirectly. With a jacket you don't have to thread water. This means you can huddle together as a group and stay as still as possible, so that the thin layer of water around you that you have so carefully warmed up, doesn't wash away that easily.

Tip: if you ever do find yourself without an immersion suit, but with a life jacket in cold water, tuck your trousers in your socks, put elastic bands or something around your sleeves and also try to seal your neck the best you can. Don't let that warm water wash away. And put something, anything, on your head to prevent exposure. Even a plastic bucket is better than nothing.

[englishal]

It is not always so cold in the Channel. Example, on a hot summer's day with sunshine warming up the top layer of the sea and skin, someone could easily survive for 12 hrs without a survival suit on.....but maybe less than a couple with no lifejacket on as they'd probably drown from exhaustion. I'd like to think the pickup time in the channel would be less than an hour.

In the summer I'd go with life jacket and raft (and PLB). In the winter I'd like to wear an immersion suit, though I must admit for my last crossing to the Channel islands in March I didn't bother.

[Piper.Classique]

So what do you take to fly over 150 nm of wall to wall pine trees? No clearings in sight from 2000 ft.......
Personally I prefer crossing water any day, and that's with no liferaft