You can combine the two: glide to a suitable crash area and pull the chute…
Can anyone understand the sound track and say whether the last transmission is the pilot or ATC?
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
Especially in areas with no “glide clear” rule, such as the USA
The USA does have a “glide clear” rule.
§91.119 Minimum safe altitudes: General.
Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes:
(a) Anywhere. An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface.
This doesn’t seem to be strictly enforced (I’d argue that some of the landings where a road has been the only place the pilot could put it down violates this rule) but it is there in black and white.
I listened to the ATC transmissions about the 22T with oil pressure issues and I couldn’t understand why the ATC was looking to vector the Pilot for an approach, perhaps the conditions were so marginal, they had no other option…..
Oh, just as a side – three of us recently started up a group based around an SR20, I was concerned that the premiums would be unaffordable but that’s not true, Our insurance premiums for Hull coverage on that aircraft are 1.5% of the agreed Hull value with an excess of 2000 euros (3 named pilots all with relatively low hours – one with a new licence, the other two with between 2 – 300 hours….) The only stipulation: Cirrus Training from a CSIP, minimum 1 hour.
Now back to pulling the chute…. from a purely financial point of view:
Faced with a defective engine, if I successfully land in a field / on a runway, I’ve saved the insurers a penny or two but I’m still left with the cost of repairing the engine AND I get to pay my excess IF there is any repairable damage on the plane. If I pull the chute, the plane is effectively going to be a write-off (for a 2003 – 2004 model likely) so I get the agreed hull value back AND I don’t pay the excess. No brainer, huh?
From a personal point of view:
Cirrus makes the following claim: “Nobody has been killed after a successful CAPS deployment”. Knowing this, why wouldn’t I deploy the CAPS if I’m not confident I’ll make the field? Again, a no brainer.
A final point – the SR22T in the video was still swaying to and fro, this looks like a clear indication that the aircraft hadn’t stabilised under the CAPS hence the altitude where they decided to use the Chute was relatively low, the pilot was obviously looking to make a landing and saw that it wasn’t assured.
91.119 is not really a glide clear rule. Given the rarity of people coming to harm during on-road landings, landing on sports fields etc. It would be arguable if there is any undue hazard (the rule says undue, not no hazard) and in general practice single engine aircraft in the US fly over cities all the time. So decades of practice would indicate that the rule is not not strictly enforced, but that roads indeed are places where you can land without undue hazard. Also, from a proportionality point of views, cars on the same roads kill innocent pedestrians in their thousands, so they are hardly islans of urban protection.
The uk has a proper glide clear rule that says – from memory, so not verbatim – that if you fly over the congested area of a city, town or settlement you must be able to land outside that congested area in the event of an engine failure.
That, according to the letter of it, rules out taking account landing sites within that congested area (and the CAA is on record saying that in London, the river Thames and the royal parks are within the congested area, although that has never been tested in court), and Heathrow Special only issues clearances to flights over central london to multi-engine aircraft.
so I get the agreed hull value back AND I don’t pay the excess. No brainer, huh?
While it might be that your insurance will handle it that way, don’t count on it, or better ask them. It might just as well be that they will not pay for the engine in case the plane is totalled. They could say: Ok, we’ll pay for the plane, but the engine would have had to be overhauled anyway, even if you had made the runway … and there’s no insurance for the engine.
My insurance declared they would actually pay for the whole plane in that case .. but better make sure.
Faced with a defective engine, if I successfully land in a field / on a runway, I’ve saved the insurers a penny or two but I’m still left with the cost of repairing the engine AND I get to pay my excess IF there is any repairable damage on the plane. If I pull the chute, the plane is effectively going to be a write-off (for a 2003 – 2004 model likely) so I get the agreed hull value back AND I don’t pay the excess. No brainer, huh?
Yes, definitely, totalling the aircraft will avoid any “betterment” issues.
OTOH if the insured hull value is far enough above the market value, they may just well choose to repair it, and then you get
) avionicsBut even a writeoff is likely to increase your premium substantially. Maybe not in the USA but in the UK it will because they will look at the circumstances and if they think you were just a fool they will make you pay. We had various threads on this here over the years. Unfortunately, as often, I was pressed on a point which involved me knowing something which the person who told me would not go public with But I can say that the insurer took a very dim view of the particular UK chute pull and ramped up the excess several times, and offered to bring it back down in return for a hefty increase in the premium. I have the figures but can’t post them. I then got pursued by a well known US “Cirrus scene personality” over this – he insisted this was impossible and demanded proof, which I didn’t give him except to tell him to contact the syndicate and then the insurer (easy to trace, obviously). I doubt he bothered…
Can anyone understand enough of the sound track to tell which of the last few transmissions were the pilot? It may make it possible to see if the engine was running at the time.
so I get the agreed hull value back AND I don’t pay the excess. No brainer, huh?
While it might be that your insurance will handle it that way, don’t count on it, or better ask them. It might just as well be that they will not pay for the engine in case the plane is totalled. They could say: Ok, we’ll pay for the plane, but the engine would have had to be overhauled anyway, even if you had made the runway … and there’s no insurance for the engine.
During the gathering of quotations, I asked what their response would be in such an scenario: Engine Failure (for whatever reason), CAPS Pull, aircraft bent beyond economic repair. 4 of the respondents said that I would get the agreed hull value back, irrespective of whether the problem was due to catastrophic engine failure – a con rod through the crank case, for example – or something as avoidable as a lack of fuel; 2 said that they would consider deducting money for the repair to the engine as the aircraft would no longer have that value with a duff engine.
The issue with no claims and premiums thereafter is something else though…..
I just bought many parts from the Cirrus Sr22-G3 that came down by CAPS at Gloucestershire Airport and actually the landing was so smooth that not even the airbags went off. I have the complete seats of that airplane and they, and the installed energy absorbing modules, are like new. These modules can go bad when you (or a mechanic …) kneel on the seat. Ok, that landing was especially smooth because it landed in trees, but I have seen the interiors or some that landed on streets or other hard surfaces .. normally no problem.
14 of the planes that came down by chute went back into service.
Anyone who, in a developing emergency, is going through mental calculations about how pulling the parachute affects future premiums and insurance payouts is focusing in the wrong thing…
Peter, I can share numbers as much as I remember them. The increase in excess proposed by the insurer was 10,000 pounds, and they offerd to waive it for 1k extra premium. I know this as I was renting a cirrus from the owner at the time and he had the decency to ask my opinion as his sole renter since the rental agreemend had me liable for the excess in case i prang it.
My reply was that for this to be a good deal I would have to have a more than 10 percent chance of doing more than 10k damage in any given year, so if i believed that i shouldn’t be flying the aircraft (or at all), he obviously felt the same and declined.
