Cirrus Vision Jet Pilot Pulls Chute in Florida

For those wondering at the context, this is a company that builds well-liked small aircraft with the unique feature of having a last-resort emergency parachute for the entire plane built into the fuselage.

<i>AVweb</i> did an interesting video a couple of years ago, &quot;Are Planes With Parachutes Really Safer?&quot;:<p>&gt; <i>The Cirrus line of aircraft have been flying for 20 years and although most people in aviation know they have full aircraft parachutes, it&#x27;s fair to ask how effective these have been. With more than 90 uses of the so-called CAPS, has the system really saved lives? In this video, AVweb&#x27;s Paul Bertorelli analyzes the record.</i><p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=zT58pzY41wA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=zT58pzY41wA</a><p>Concludes that parachutes a generally a good thing, and even though the Cirrus aircraft fleet has grown from 5000 to 7000 airplanes over the last ten years (12m30s), the anual fatality numbers have stay the same and so have overall annual accidents.<p>The first few years didn&#x27;t see much improvement, probably because the training didn&#x27;t emphasize it as much, but since ~2013 the advice is generally &quot;<i>if you&#x27;re experiencing issues just pull the &#x27;chute</i>&quot;. There is a cost to fixing the aircraft afterwards, but it will be you paying it and not your widow or estate.

The problem with Cirrus is the parachute. Insurance companies don’t like it because instead of half or more of aircraft landing safely on a road or in a field, they are now all write offs. This then adds insurance premiums. We are also now in the position of having to do extra annual training (irrespective of experience) to get insurance because so many amateur pilots are flying Cirrus (I think it’s the new V tail doctor killer, minus the killing). You have been warned: there are better aircraft out there imho. And I haven’t even started on the flight controls (spring feedback is terrible), unstable yaw stability without yaw dampener (pax vomit profusely), and single power lever which decreases rpm with power resulting in an aircraft unable to (easily) slow down (without idle) which is normally done with prop braking. This results in energy problems similar to airlines where rookie pilots who cannot think ahead end up with too much energy. Also these modern long thin glider wing designs trying to get +5kts more can go to hell - they are getting so large it makes ground handling difficult; often longer than the airborne saving. If you want to get there faster, you save time on the ground. A decked out RV-10 is a good alternative.

awesome to see the first real world example of a caps parachute deployment on the vision jet working out well.<p>the caps parachute results in “a good day for the passengers — walk away, bad day for the insurance company — plane will never fly again”<p>the vision jet also has a “safe return” feature that will 100% autonomously land at the nearest suitable airport.<p>both brs and safe return are designed to be initiated by a passenger, in the event of pilot incapacitation.<p>i’ve had the pleasure of flying on a vision jet before — it’s a really cool aircraft that flies almost as fast and high as much more expensive jets. and can be easily (realistically) flown by a single pilot.

I&#x27;ll be really curious to see what the reason for the deployment was. If it was listed elsewhere, I have missed it.<p>Looking at the CAPS pulls on SR22## aircraft, the primary reasons are almost always either 1) pilot error or 2) engine issues.<p>Getting to the point of being insurable in a VisionJet is likely no small feat, though I admit I have no idea what the minimums and&#x2F;or ratings required are to obtain an affordable policy. I am expecting that a low-time pilot is not going to be able to afford the insurance.<p>Turbine engines are notably reliable, so am curious if there was some other kind of issue.<p>In any case, glad they are OK and am interested to see the NTSB report someday in the future as to the cause.

Cirrus had a bad safety record when the aircraft first came out (this was the SR series). In essence it was a similar story to the “doctor killer” mantra that plagued Bonanzas early on… essentially pilots with more money that flying skill. The SR series are nice aircraft but also not “docile” relative to other single engine pistons. One can get into trouble real quick if flying outside the numbers and envelope.<p>Cirrus really revamped their training and that had a big impact. They also changed training to really emphasize chute pulls, which had probably led to some hair trigger pilot pulls but has also saved lives.<p>Will be interesting to see what happened here when all the details come out.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=75m6ZTODxS8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=75m6ZTODxS8</a><p>-- demo - cool --

&quot;no life threatening injuries&quot;, but notably did not walk away from the crash. There&#x27;s a lot in between those two.

Is scaling such a thing to a passenger aircraft feasible?

Yes, a hull write-off is expensive, but passenger injuries and&#x2F;or fatalities are even more expensive.

I used to do lead generation marketing for these folks and noted this was a neat feature at the time that was a big value prop we led with. Glad to see it works.

Has a CAPS save ever injured a bystander or destroyed expensive property like a house?<p>(Not saying an uncontrolled landing couldn&#x27;t do the same, just curious about the history)

It amazes me the way the pilot doing the demonstration in the video (embedded in TFA) is so calm and matter-of-fact about the process. It&#x27;s putting a remarkable degree of trust in an automated system, which, if there were some edge case failure, would be fatal.