On Aug 19, 12:06 pm, "Kyle Boatright" wrote:
wrote in message

oups.com...

On Aug 19, 10:53 am, "Kyle Boatright" wrote:
I find it very hard to speculate about this particular episode until we
know
the airplane's fuel state, the weather at reachable fields, the
conditions
in which the aircraft was flying, or the training level of the pilot.

The relevant information is easy to look up.

Excellent! I'll wait for your follow up post containing said information.

I posted a link to the wx info (by the way, there was a typo: I wrote
15 miles instead of 25). The pilot's training level isn't relevant,
since basic instrument cruise flight is a required skill for all
private pilots.

For example, if the pilot wasn't IFR trained, he might have been in a
situation where he wasn't confident of keeping the airplane right side
up.

That's true, but only if the pilot was incompetent.

Many competent IFR and VFR pilots have died due to loss of control in IMC.

That's probably true, but we need to be more specific. Unexpected VFR
into IMC is often disorienting; pilots may crash because they cling to
fleeting visual cues, not realizing they're in IMC. Obviously, though,
that's not the case if a pilot pulled the chute because he realized he
was unable to fly by instruments.

Loss of control in IMC may also result from especially challenging
circumstances (convection, icing, complicated approach, etc.). But
that also wasn't the case here.

There are a thousand factors at work, and if the PIC in this situation
decided that the chute was his/her best option, so be it.

If a pilot pulls the chute because he judges an uncontrolled parachute
descent to be less risky than trying to keep the plane upright for a
few minutes in simple instrument cruise flight, then he has judged
himself to have less than the minimum required competence for a
private pilot. (As I said earlier, it's not THAT judgment that I'm
disputing; he may well have made the right choice at that point.)

Anyway, I'm glad they're ok.