Cirrus Chute Pull, 4 Survive landing in trees, 22/07/12
 

Update: FAA Inspectors To Visit Pickens County Crash Site | WSPA

Some quite good pictures and video footage, fortunately all survived, believed pilot had engine failure and was unable to safely make Pickens County Airport in North Carolina.

While missing tons of green prime horse padocks all around.

But no instead of doing a forced landing before the engine failed they had to try and make some tarmac and ended up killing the airframe.

ACME Mapper 2.0 County Airport (South Carolina)

Waldo Lardburger realises that having forgotten to put enough fuel in his "airplane", the engine is about to stop. Ripping out a Big Mac-flavoured belch, he puts down his half-gallon diet coke and reviews the situation. In front of him the glass-cockpit stares back - the GPS a riot of green. With a yawn, Waldo thinks "Fuggit, too hard man...!" and reaches for his Coke and the Ballistic Deploy lever. He settles back in his seat mumbling "Brakes, undercarriage, mixture,...yeah, yeah, yeah..whatever dude..."

The preceding does not necessarily represent the possible findings of an inquiry into the incident... :=

There is no question that in dozens of incidents to date CAP's has turned a smoking hole with dead bodies accident into one where everyone walked away and in many instances where the aircraft was repaired and continues to fly on.

From a pure self interest point of view, anything that cuts down on the screaming "light airplane disaster at XXX" headlines is a good thing.

But at a more human level I am dismayed that some posters seem to be comfortable that death
is an appropriate penalty for recreational/non professional pilots that suffer a skill deficit under high stress situations.

I guess they know their superior skills and steely nerves will always allow them to deal with any emergency and so they will never lower themselves to consider use a device that will pretty much guarantee a survivable return to earth in the event of a significant emergency :rolleyes:

That is a more than fair point BPF.

My comment which I will admit is based on only seeing the surrounding Sat view is that I hope the CAP is not being used as the first option instead of the last.

I will admit that once commited to a forced landing at some point the CAP will not be available so a call has to be made before they reach that point.

Was the plane pushing for tarmac with numerous fields going under the wheels? Only the report will tell.

Regardless of the events that led to the pilot pulling the chute, he did it in time to save his own life, and that of his three passengers.

Even if the aircraft is written off, who cares? The aircraft failed you - you owe it nothing. The priority is saving lives. Done. Great job.

Whilst in general, I'm with Jock about over-reliance on technology and the possibly tenuous airmanship of a few Cirrus pilots - that terrain, being hilly, wooded, and congested with all sorts of other obstacles, is hardly condusive to a good forced landing. I think in the circumstances, pulling the handle probably was the right action.

Depending of-course on the height and location of the aeroplane at the time of the engine failure.

G

Very true but I suspect that the type will eventually be priced out of the market by insurance costs. And all of us will be paying increased premiums.

I've heard differing things about insurance companies attitudes to the Cirrus; in the UK in light of the now infamous incident in which someone apparently pulled the chute after a brief venture into IMC they appear to be somewhat nervous about the skill level of pilots that might prompt them to pull the chute on a perfectly flyable plane.

In the US however I've heard that actually on the whole the insurance companies would rather keep the pilot as a customer than have them die... So it seems to cut both ways from an insurance point of view...considering how common the Cirrus is, especially in the US, a slightly doubt it's ever going to be uninsurable though.

With regard to this particular crash; I'm all for speculation and looking at the aerial shot I don't think the area looks great for a forced landing, certainly not one in which the plane would be less damaged than by pulling the chute. Yes there are lots of fields but they aren't very big (for reference the runway is 1500m I believe) and there are lots of trees and houses in the way. Although obviously if one pulls the chute there is the risk of hitting a house/tree once you are falling but you are probably less likely to be injured descending under the chute and hitting something then hitting something going forwards at flying speed.

One single casualty (with a good lawyer fighting for his/her relatives in the US) will cost the insurers much more than a whole fleet of damaged Cirruses. If the insurers were smart, they would install a parachute in every single and light twin for free.
Anyway, money should be the least important consideration when making decisions in an emergency. Safety first. I, too, would have pulled that handle. I wish I had one of those on every aircraft I fly.

Not sure about that one MJ, I would hazard a guess and say the majority of the insurance payouts are to passenger crash victims, their heirs or people/property on the ground as opposed to hull replacement in a successful BRS deployment at least in the US. If chutes reduce this then surely that would reflect in reduced insurance premiums. Also, perhaps the increased number of crash survivors due to BRS will reduce the manufacturers product liability and lawyer costs which accounts for a significant percentage of the price of a new plane and has caused manufacturers like Piper etc. to cease production in the past and discouraged others from commencing design and production.

Whilst these debates are interesting and give food for thought, I certainly would not give two thingy's what anyone thought of my actions, or what their views of a more appropriate action were, if I pulled and got it on the ground and all walked away.

I personally find it difficult to fault a decision that results in all walking away. To do so when offering alternative actions with such limited knowledge is....................!

BB

I am not sure how long the cirrus aircraft have been flying around with the CAPS system but 31 activations in an aircraft not as numerous as the C172/PA28 types seems to be rather high and suggests that it is used as an easy way out option. Are there many cases of the SR22 actually pulling off any landings away from an airfield when in trouble?

All fair points. Especially the US take on the insurance liability.

Must admit I used to fly and teach in similar topography so to me it looks pretty good for someone in a PA38/C172 at least. Never had to do a forced landing in anger mind but there have been a few in the area and all of the survived.

It is quite interesting though the views.

So what is the average profile of someone that pulls the chute?

And what is the profile of someone that doesn't and has a fatal?

BPF, we disagree on some things, but this post is 100% spot on :D:D

I just fail to comprehend the general luddite UK attitude, especially in a demographic - pilots - who should normally embrace technology. Beats me....

We do embrace technology.

Just don't sell our souls and jump in with both feet when the latest thing comes out.

We also don't forget hard learned lessons from the past and in some ways we do also appreciate the basic skills as an art. If you can survive without the use of technology when said technology fails you still have options.

Currently it seems to me that at the moment a great bit of technology is being hampered by a few that are not using it in the most approprate way.

To add some of it may be the way alot of us were trained. We got it hammered into us that you never give up ever. And pulling that handle means you have.

Interesting questions, indeed, but only out of interest and to help in training.

Any such stats available?

When things go tits up the number one objective is to maximise the chances of survivability, most other considerations are irrelevant unless the chances of pulling them off are very favourable and do not compromise the chances of survivability.

BB

And therein lies the problem (my bold)!

BB

To be fair the chute does give you a final option and I will fully admit that in some of the crashes, the fact the pilot hasn't given up and used the chute could of stopped the crash being fatal.

To me the whole thing is a very interesting discussion on pilot thought processes. I am not anti the chute by any means.

Its very similar in my view to the teaching of spinning. Alot out there will say its paramount and unacceptable not to teach it and it would save lives.
When in actuality the accidents stats pretty robustly prove that more people are killed teaching it than it saves. Maybe pulling the chute will be statistically the best option. At least it will insure a constant replacement of aircraft so we don;t have 30 year old ****e heaps to put up with :D

My own personal view on spinning is that its a skill which is acceptable to leave out of primary training but after a broader experence base is gained its advisable to revisit beyond the previous avoidance training. But it should be done by an instructor who is competent to teach it. I did used to spin with students but now will freely admit looking back I wasn't competent to teach spinning.

Yet another of these threads.

What worries me is when clearly intelligent people run off the same arguments again and again without I presume any knowledge of the facts.

We dont know, or at least I certainly dont, the circumstances surrounding this pull so how it can be assumed the pilot gave up or resorted to the chute before considering other options escapes me?

Moreover, as another poster commented, are we seriously chastising a pilot for pulling the chute knowing so little. Some of us may well have thought there were other options and some of us may well have thought we were sufficiently current to land in a field but we werent flying the aircraft, were we? The chap who was may have been less current and less comfortable. I have no idea how regular he flew, but if you are going to ban people from being in command if they have only flown a few hours in the last 90 days you had better let EASA and the FAA know first. Like it or not GA probably wouldnt exist if we required every pilot to be as current as some on here would have.

Fact is a forced landing is an emergency and even for those current it can go horribly wrong. As we have discussed before you dont know what you might impact (even in that innocent looking field); the outcome is not certain. On the other hand the record under chute is astonishingly good.

I know, I know it presents another problem. Should the chute be the first resort? The trouble is when you attempt that forced landing ignoring the chute and it goes horribly wrong do you spend the rest of your life thinking what if?

Judging by the interview footage (a previous pilot), it sounds like the chute was pulled after a stall/spin situation. So, in all probability, the pilot was trying to make a field but couldn't stretch the glide.

MJ, so why do you see pulling as giving up? What is it giving up, certainly not the will to live.

To, as you put it:

would necessitate there always being a guaranteed favourable outcome, this is clearly not the case, therefore giving up trying to put it on the ground and pulling is in fact a sensible option when other options have run out.

The difficult question is in determining when that point is.

Nail on the head with this one! I don't know the reason for accidents in spin training, however your above statement could be an influencing factor.

BB

The most appropriate way
 

MJock – there is an awful lot of info on the COPA website re when to pull and when not to. Bottom line is that CAPS could and should have saved many, many more lives if people had had enough awareness to pull the chute earlier. I think your “giving up” is the wrong term, pulling CAPS at the right time/occasion can demonstrate as much airmanship as a well executed forced landing. The more people that acknowledge this, the more lives will be saved.


Good post BPF:D


I wish I had BPS.

Exactly its a new concept to add into the equation.

Alot of us, well everyone that doesn't have a chute the only thing that is going to save us is our handling and decision making skills. Its a bit of a fundemental change in philosophy. And one that I don't think has matured in its application.

As I have said I am more than willing to accept that eventually it may become the norm to pull that handle if it gets a wee bit scary. We may get to that stage in my life time.

Personally I would object to all the extra fuel you burn carrying one about. But then again I have survived so far without one and I doudt very much if I will ever fly anything which would be so equiped. But in the grand scale of things I am a pro pilot but no sky god, relatively high hours compared to most GA and extremely current flying in a none autopilot twin but not so in a SEP.

I will promise though if I bite the bullet in a tommy I will have on my grave "they were right about those sodding chutes"

And realistically in the UK there will be less than 50 instructors that are truely competent to teach spinning. There will be a load out there that can patter it while doing a normal one which is what I used to do. But to actually deal with it when it goes wrong very few and most of them will be ex mil.

Surely your life is worth more than a bit of fuel?:confused:

You could always go for the other option of leaving the beer alone to lose a percentage of the weight and make up the difference in fuel costs through saving the beer money?:p:p

BB

What a supid idea leaving the beer/cider out.

You will be saying that deep fried haggis in curry sauce and chips is also out.

Well to be honest my own personal risk assesment of the dangers versus cost is that its not worth the fuel. Yes for some it may very well be worth the extra. The way I operate/flight profile hopefully will provide more of a defense against a fatal accident than a chute.

I am up to 7 pilots that I have known that have been killed in GA aircraft. 6 of them definately wouldn't have been saved (CFIT and midair) and one of them nobody has a clue what happened. I know loads though that have had a bum clencher that have remained alive by not giving up and staying calm and applying basic pilot skills to sort things out.

It is nearly always the pilot that causes the accident by either mishandling or poor decision making. The chute I will admit is a solution to this problem.

Then there is that fateful day when your time is up and the all the cards are against you no matter how current experenced you are.

I would consider the Cirrus 'chute to be similar to a reserve for a skydiver.

The instruction for a parachutist is very simple. If you have a problem with your main, try to deal with it. The very instant you realise you can't deal with it, panic sets in or you have any doubt whatsoever, get rid of it and pull your reserve - that's what it is there for.

Without doubt, no matter the reasons why, if I was in a similar situation in a Cirrus, I'd pull the reserve - end of.
Afterwards, people could argue why they would or wouldn't have done similar, I probably wouldn't care.
The stupid thing would be to die in crash and have people ask "Why didn't he pull the handle..?"

To add the first article that I read said they had started at 9000ft and then another one said they had deployed when trying to stretch the glide to get into the airport.

Quite a common issue with student pilots is a engine failure at altitude. They can bang the PFL in time and time again from 1000-2000ft. 5k plus way to many options even if you do it in the training area which they know like the back of thier hands.

On reading the 9000ft comment my thought was that it was a "nearest direct" with no thought about all those fields going underneith. They must of been flying for over 10 mins and covered over 10 miles.

I think it was BPF or DAR has said somewhere else its the partial engine failures that give the most problems not the out right engine failures. Personally if the sod starts giving me grief it would get treated as failed and a forced landing commenced. Trying to glide over ten miles away is never going to work. If the runway was inside 5 miles yep have a shot at it.

I understand the Pilot was a CSIP (An instructor who has done the Cirrus Standardized Instructor Program) if that is the case I am reasonably sure he weighed up all options and in his mind chose the best.

Mad Jock those fields look pretty appalling to me, landing at 70 knots under extreme pressure and 4 up there is I would guess a 50 / 50 chance of writing off the plane and having some serious injuries if not fatal's, that's if you got it in the field and were lucky enough to avoid all the trees and rocks.

Well done the Pilot for taking a good decision.:ok:

As for giving up the Beer and Cider I agree that would be ridiculous.

Depends what you are used to 007.


Some of those fields look splended to me, horse paddocks with a hill at the end. Full flap, sideslip it over the fence and stall her on and keep the nose up.

Much better than the scottish loch, peat bog, xmas tree plantation or land rover track that were my options mostly.

10mins from 9k gives you a whole heap of distance and energy to get a good one.

And the other thing is that some pilots are extremely reluctant to shut an engine down. We get this in twins. A CSP produces more drag than a feathered one at low power settings or should I say production which completely screws with your performance and in regards to the twin can kill you because it can increase your minimum control speed to above what your Vyse speed is. The rudder runs out of authority and you have drag and one side and full power on the other and she just rolls. So you either have to take some power off which then leaves you in a worse situation than shutting the duff one down you have more drag and less power.

Instructors arn't gods we have all made multiple suspect decisions, which post event we wouldn't do again.

If there was such a lack of options for a forced landing should they even have been flying over the area?

I dont think it is the lack.

When you have done PFLs how often have you decided at 500 feet you arent quite so keen on what you saw from 2,000 feet?

How often have you driven past a field that you have done PFLs over and thought I am quite pleased I never actually had to land in that field?

I am not saying it doesnt work a lot of the time. I am questioning how easy it is to be certain enough that the field is the best option at 2,000 feet; at 1,000 feet there arent many alternatives in a conventional aircraft, with a chute there is another alternative.

Not very often to be honest most of them I didn't like from 2000ft either.

And my knock off height was considerably less than 500ft so the difference between car height and what we could see is virtually nill.

I am not desputing that, but to glide best part of 9000ft down struggling to get on some tarmac isn't really the best option is it?

Basically what you are saying is now that forced landings are a thing of the past for cirrus drivers. I don't have a problem with deciding the chute is the best option from 1000ft if your stuck over a cold lava field. Or your 1000ft and not visual with the ground.

But... In the vast majority of cases a forced landing is not fatal even if the field is the most unsuitable one within 100 miles if the pilot can see it.

Aye, was a bit bit, wasn't it!

Absolutely right that keeping calm will and does help. I was speaking to a PPL a few weeks back that recently put one down in rough ground and walked away, as did his passenger. His story, however included bits about what he hadn't seen from higher up and could do nothing about when he got close. Plane was written off.

Interesting view, would knowing what lay between you and the airfield not influence your decision?

Often, and is just what I said above re the guy that recently did it for real.

BB

In the US, insurance is mostly driven by hull value and then by number of seats since that ups the injury liability. A Cirrus carries no premium over other planes.

My rough guess for off airport landings is:

BRS 99% survival 5% plane will fly again
Non-BRS 75% survival 60% plane will fly again

I favor life over property.

Why is the prevailing attitude of many that:
a) The pilot should die trying because he should have trained better
b) The passengers should die because they chose to fly with a poorly trained pilot

Here is an off airport landing by a Cirrus flown by a guy who thought the BRS system shouldn't be used if he saw a good field (that according to a friend of his and fellow Cirrus pilot). He had plenty of time. The ATC recordings have him telling ATC his intentions to dead stick it in.

In the case of the chute pull under discussion, ATC recordings have ATC giving the pilot clearance to Pickins County airport, having the trucks roll just in case and when the pilot says he can't make the field acknowledging the pilot's decision to activate BRS.

The plane was a write off as other have said so what if everyone walked away. Which to be honest happens alot check the AAIB reports.

Not really because its indecision that kills even if the most piss poor plan implamented correctly will have a better out come than a wait and see what happens. By controlling the situation you dominate it and create least suprises. Its the suprises that kill you, you focus on the job at hand. Trying to go somewhere else you are splitting your attention between are you going to make it, is there a field that we can get into, and in this case should I pull the chute.

Where as if you had just said right engine failure and dropped into your failure drill, alot less options, alot less work and alot more chance of it being successful. Which to be honest most forced landings are even if the airframe is written off which doesn't take much with the plastic aircraft.

I think 75% is a huge under estimation for the survivability rate.

Maybe but at least with Cirrus aircraft (success is not only pilot but aircraft dependent), success is less than using BRS.

Recently the US NTSB issued a report that broke out safety by type of flying. Most GA statistics mix all GA activities including instruction which has a better overall safety record. The report can be found here.

From data broken out by Rick Beach who keeps data on Cirrus flight hours and accidents:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7135532/267....png-550x0.png

Are you sure about that?

HAve you got the figures to back that up.

Because I don't think the true accident figures will confirm your guess.

There are extremely few forced landings ending in a fatality per thousand of hours flown.

That graph is what we are discussing.

If you could get say one of dimonnd aircraft V cirrus you might be in with a shout. But comparing a multi type age range between 0 and 60 year old fleet is not comparing like with like.

In fact for a less than 10 year old aircraft that accident rate is pretty disgusting condidering most cirrus flight profiles will be staying in the relatively safe zone of cruise for the bulk of there hours.

You need to pop down to spec savers, as I said I rate at 70 knots around a 50 / 50 chance of someone in that aircraft would receive serious injuries of death, even if I am grossly out and it is a 90% chance of success, I do not like those odds with my and my pax when a far better and safer option of the chute.

What on earth are you trying to do flying at 10 knots over the stall speed while doing a performance landing?

Do you know how much extra energy you having to get rid of by carrying an extra 16% speed?

No wonder you think those fields are tight. Try doing a glide appoach at a more suitable 63knts and see how little runway you require.