C J Campbell ) wrote:

"Marco Leon" mleon(at)optonline.net wrote in message
...
Sure the chute worked as advertised. Great.

What irks me is how and why the aircraft experienced all these instrument
failures one right after another.

The man flew into IMC at 400 feet (I believe he was VFR and had no
instrument rating) and probably became disoriented. His instruments
did not fail. He did.

CJ, your conclusion does not appear to be the case, as the pilot is
instrument rated.

An interview with the pilot suggests that poor avionics maintenance may
have been the cause. However, flying into low IMC immediately after the
aircraft returned from maintenance may have been a bad decision.

From Aeronews 4/12 news (http://makeashorterlink.com/?T17252808)

--------------- start quote -------------------------------

ANN Exclusive: Cirrus SR22 BRS Survivor Describes Parachute Deployment
Mon, 12 Apr '04

Saturday should have been a good day for Jeff Ippoliti. And, ultimately,
we'd have to suggest that it was. Despite low scud and low visibility,
he was very comfortable with his SR22, an IFR-equipped aircraft that
he'd logged nearly 600 hours in, and one he'd come to depend on for an
unparalleled degree of freedom in getting where he wanted to go... swiftly.

A founding member of the highly regarded Cirrus Owner's and Pilot's
Association, Jeff had been flying a Cirrus Design SR22, Serial Number
80, for several years and simply wouldn't think of owning anything else.
He loved the speed, the looks, and the safety features and he'd gotten
quite comfortable with his personal bird, N916LJ.

He started the morning picking up his airplane at the local service
center, where he'd had it worked on, in order to deal with "some
electrical (and other) issues."

The shop assured him he was good to go, and after his usual preflight
and prep, Jeff launched out of Ft. Lauderdale Exec (FXE) enroute to Palm
Beach International, a short hop up the road. Weather was not all that
good. Broken bases at 400 feet and IFR visibility meant that much of the
trip would be conducted under IFR, though the scud reportedly had a
number of "occasionally broken" layers up to, and through, 6000 feet.

Ippoliti launched IFR, from FXE, and encountered "heavy IMC" shortly
after leaving the ground. Settling into this normal scan and IFR flying
patterns for the short trip up the coast, Jeff went into the soup at
only 400 feet AGL and continued the SR22's robust climb, now approved to
proceed to 2000 feet, as he switched over from tower freq's to the local
center.

From there, a pleasant effort requiring professional instrument flying
skills started tasking him in ways he had hoped to avoid. "Minutes after
departure, I started experiencing instrument failures, one after
another. No warning. No smoke. No clues. Just gauges going out one after
another." As the first gauge failed, Jeff told Center he wanted to turn
back. Center immediately gave him vectors for the return, but thereafter
the perceived succession of failures made the turn-around seem fairly iffy.

Ippoliti was stunned. Not only were gauges failing, but they were
failing in systems that didn't appear to be related. In a matter of
seconds, just hundreds of feet from the ground and untold obstacles
obscured by IMC, he really didn't know what to trust. This couldn't be
good.

With an unknown number of hazards looming, he informed ATC that he was
clearly in trouble. And after some initial hope of heading back, the
SR22 pilot realized that turning back to the airport was something he
wasn't sure he could do with his gauges continuing to fail in "rapid
succession."

"I told center I couldn't turn back... that I was going to pull the
chute." Jeff then told ANN that one of the few responses he remembered
from that moment on was center responding, "you're going to pull what?"

From there, Ippoliti's activities were quick and assured. "I'd thought
about this... but I never expected to have to do it." Jeff pulled the
power back, killed the engine and reached up for the BRS CAPS handle...
and pulled. Despite all his trepidation, Jeff noted that the pull went
well, "No problem with that, it pulled easily."

BANG!

The chute OPENED. Ippoliti then described feeling a little 'G' as the
plane slowed, swung around a bit, and then things calmed down remarkably
fast. "From there it was almost a non-event. The ELT went off right away
and prevented me from understanding Center because it was so loud, and
the pilot door came off as the chute fired... but the ride down lasted
only seconds as I came down on some trees and just... stopped."

Ippoliti was alive and had landed in a local park. The aircraft was not
only intact, but surprisingly suffered limited damage... "a lot less
than what might have been," he noted. He doesn't have much to say about
the landing impact, as the trees apparently absorbed most of the energy,
and turned history's third emergency CAPS landing into a "relative
non-event."

People who watched the plane land came immediately to the site and
Ippoliti soon found himself in the role of dutiful reporter (and
unwanted center of attention) to the numerous Law Enforcement, FAA and
other government agencies who converged on the scene. "FAA was
terrific," he said, and the support he got from Cirrus Design, shortly
thereafter (including a ride home), "was fantastic."

Jeff graciously called ANN less than 24 hours after his ordeal... a time
when there had to be a lot of things on his mind, though one thing
seemed certain. When asked if he was going to get another plane, he
answered quickly, "ABSOLUTELY... another Cirrus. I wouldn't fly anything
else."

As Ippoliti becomes the third pilot to experience what all Cirrus flyers
prepare for (and hope never to use), he joins the "informed unanimity"
that has developed from each of the survivors... a strong belief in a
safety system that was once looked down-upon by much of the rest of the
GA industry.. an industry who is now beginning to understand that this
technology has saved six lives so far and will, undoubtedly, keep doing
so far into the future.

Observers at the scene tell ANN that N916LJ seems in "Very good shape...
not as good as Lionel Morrison's aircraft (the first Cirrus to use the
CAPS system)... the leading edges of both wings scraped trees as it came
down but it looks like the landing gear never actually got to the
ground, since it was hung up in the trees."

ANN reached Cirrus CEO, Alan Klapmeier, just as he was returning from
the impact site, who was very pleased to be talking about incidents in
which no one came to harm. "First, in terms of preliminaries, no one
knows what really happened until NTSB makes final determination... but
obviously the whole purpose of the parachute was to give pilots one more
choice when they run out of options... and that sure appears to be the
case (in these incidents). These were tough situations for these guys
and we're glad the chute was there to give them a second chance."

[ANN Thanks Jeff Ippoliti and COPA's Mike Radomsky for their help in
preparing this article].


--
Peter