"Richard Kaplan" writes:

I think we probably agree on when the parachute SHOULD be used. It is
indeed unknown if that is when it WILL generally be used in practice. It is
possible -- though by no means a fact -- that the Cirrus could attract a
certain demographic of pilot experience and mission profile which will lead
to "false" deployments of the chute in a situation which could be handled
conventionally.

As far as we can tell, this has not been the case thusfar. With 1000+
planes in the air and several hundred thousand hours of time on the
fleet, there's no sign of this theoretical demographic. I suppose
something could shift radically such that this demographic suddenly
appears, and in sufficient numbers to skew the statistics, but at this
point experience has not borne out these fears.


It will be interesting to see the details as information on these accidents
become clear. Purely on a statistical basis, the odds seem likely to me
that 2 airplanes out of a fleet of 1,000 could develop unsolvable doomsday
scenarios requiring chute deployment on the same weekend -- but I cannot say
there is any real basis to that than gut feeling. We need to wait for the
details.

I'm guessing that you really meant that the odds seem *unlikely.*

Keep in mind that one person's situation that can be "handled
conventionally" can well be another person's "unsolvable doomsday
scenario." There was much armchair test pilot chatter about Lionel
Morrison's deployment following an aileron coming partway off; "*I*
would have tried to land it" and all that rot. Maybe someone could
have; maybe at landing speeds it would become uncontrollable and it
would have ended up in a smoking crater. Seems like he did the right
thing.

The Canadian pilot said that he got into a spin and couldn't recover.
The POH says to pull the handle. Perhaps a high-time pilot trained in
spins could have recovered conventionally, but it sounds like he did
not fit that profile. Seems like he did the right thing.

The Kentucky pilot that attempted to pull the chute (which didn't
deploy, resulting in an AD that appears to have had the desired
effect) got into unusual attitudes in IMC after an apparent gyro
failure with the autopilot engaged. Normally the NTSB reports in such
cases end with "witnesses observed the aircraft emerge from the clouds
in a steep nose-down attitude." I don't think there's too much
argument that pulling the handle is the wrong thing to do in such a
case, though he did manage to recover and put it down in a field (and
he was very lucky that there was enough VMC to get right side up again
and suitable terrain to land.)

The details of the Florida case are yet to be revealed, though another
high-time Cirrus pilot who talked to the high-time Cirrus pilot that
pulled the handle felt that there was "no doubt in his mind" that he
had "done the right thing at the right time."


Bottom line is that you don't get to back up in life and try another
choice and compare how things come out. You make your choice and stuff
happens. Making a choice that results in your walking away uninjured
is pretty hard to argue with when the alternative must remain unknown.

Certainly there is ample evidence that there are a lot of pilots out
there with lousy judgement; IMHO the consequential damage of a poorly
chosen parachute pull is likely to be a lot lower than a lot of other
bad choices.