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Plane Talk MAXIMIZING YOUR INVESTMENT
Just Chute Me
Smart, skilled, and otherwise respectable pilots, including some flight instructors, become completely irrational when discussing the whole airplane parachute manufactured by Ballistic Recovery Systems.
And Larry Williams, CEO of BRS, can't really understand it. “It's not a slam on your skills as a pilot to have a supplemental recovery system.”
Non-pilot passengers love the idea of a BRS system. “Universally, passengers like the idea of a ballistic recovery parachute,” says world-renowned flight instructor John King. “Pilots don't, because they want to be in control of things, but passengers don't feel in control of things anyway.”
But King agrees there are occasions when a ballistic recovery parachute would be handy.
For him, it was in 1975. John and his wife and co-pilot Martha were flying a Cessna 210 above an ice-filled overcast layer of clouds with no electrical power. The airplane had suffered an electrical system failure earlier in the flight and they had elected to turn off all electrical devices until they neared their destination, hoping to use the remaining battery power to driver radios as they descended through the clouds. But the battery was dead and there wasn't enough fuel onboard to try to find an area that was VFR.
“It was a stupid pilot trick,” King says of the incident. “It is not a recommended procedure by any one.”
King said they descended but at about 100 feet AGL, they were still in the overcast and picking up ice, so he climbed back on top to sort out what to do next.
“I really felt in my heart that the flight was going to terminate in an aircraft accident,” he says. “There has only been one time in my flying where if I had had a ballistic recovery parachute, I would have used it. … If I had had a parachute at that time, I would have used it.”
But there was no parachute, so John descended for a final time and was fortunate enough to land himself, his partner and his airplane in a cornfield. “It was my first and only aircraft accident,” he says.
Williams points out that had King's incident played out over the mountains, all might not have turned out as well as it did.
Full-aircraft parachutes made by Ballistic Recovery systems have been available for experimental airplanes since the early 80's. More than 1,500 production Cirrus aircraft have shipped with BRS parachutes installed, and BRS recently won approval to install its life-saving product in Cessna 182s. The company boasts 177 lives saved by its product.
So why aren't BRS parachutes available on all general aviation aircraft? Not because they don't work. Experts say the reason BRS is not installed on every GA airplane is that everything that goes into an airplane is a compromise. Manufacturers must decide whether the BRS system, which costs $20,000 installed and weighs more than 80 pounds for the Cessna 182 model, is worth its cost and weight when compared to other, equally important devices.
“Would you rather take that same money, and do something else, such as putting a terrain avoidance system into the airplane, because more people fly into terrain than get into a situation where a ballistic recovery parachute would be helpful,” King says.
Greg Sterling, vice president and general manager of the AOPA Insurance Agency, notes that all safety equipment must be compared to what is without a doubt the most dangerous part of every airplane-the pilot.
Sterling says insurance companies do not offer discounts for safety equipment, whether it's a GPS, terrain avoidance system, or BRS parachute, although they do offer discounts for pilots who undergo frequent recurrent training.
“For a radar altimeter to save your life, you've got to look at it. For a ballistic recovery parachute to be an effective safety device, pilots have to be trained and they have to pull the handle,” Sterling says. “Rather than focusing on a device that will get you out of Dutch if you get into trouble, most of the insurance companies would rather give you credits for keeping you from getting into trouble in the first place.”
Experts agree the parachute by itself won't save lives. In a study of accidents among the more than 1,500 Cirrus airplanes in the market equipped with BRS parachutes, seven people have been saved by the BRS system, 26 people have died in airplanes that had working parachutes that were never deployed.
The problem may be similar to the one faced by the military when ejection seats were first introduced. Despite the new, life-saving technology, pilots continued to die in accidents they could have safely ejected from.
“What the military found was that if the pilot makes the mistake, they eject late. If it's a mechanical problem with the aircraft, they eject early or on time,” Williams says. “There's a sense of guilt or pride if it's pilot error. Whereas if it's a problem with the airplane, they're going to do it faster.”
Williams said the military term for this is “pressing.” It's also a condition John & Martha King identify in their Risk Assessment course general aviation pilots: the need to succeed.
“You have this desire to succeed, you're going to have a good outcome and that overrides any good decision making in an emergency,” Williams says.
While pilots and aircraft manufacturers may have turmoil over whether or not to invest in a BRS system, their non-pilot passengers face no such quandry. Williams said that more than once during an air show he has heard a woman say to her pilot husband, “You can have any airplane you want, as long as it has a parachute.”
—Sean Fulton
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