I don't know what airplanes you have been around, but I've flown a large number of GA aircraft, from Piper cubs, to Cessna Conquests, and I woudn't want to hit anything solid in any of them. My 182RG was, other than the engine mounts a lot of aluminum sheet. I've take airplanes apart and put them back together, and there isn't sufficient material around you to expect to be able to survive any crash over 30 mph where the ground is anything but flat. I would strongly suggest that you go to an airplane graveyard and look at what happens to a light aircraft in any kind of encounter with an immovable object. My experience is that the airplane loses. I was also in the CAP as a kid and found a crashed airplane. I thought that what we were looking at was a trash pile. There wasn't a piece of the airplane bigger than 8 inches square. Admittedly this guy hit at higher speed, but airplanes are simply not designed to take any loads other than flight loads. I helped recover the bodies of a father and son who were buzzing and stalled and went in from low altitude, the airplane folded up around them and they weren't going fast at all when they crashed. There is a link above to a Cirrus crash where the guy lived, but sustained major head injuries. He hit a tree and cartwheeled in from 50 ft in the air. IMO he is really lucky to be alive. If I were him I'd be out buying lottery tickets cause this was his lucky day. When you come down in bad terrain and hook a wing, you aren't landing straight anymore, you are cartwheeling in a cabin that has virtually no protection. I think that the "crashability" of modern cars has us all fooled in to thinking that to hit something is no big deal, but talk to anybody that has survived a light plane crash and they will open your eyes. I love flying and I'm not a crazy safety fanatic, I've flown over Lake Michigan and over the mountains at night in a single, but you have got to be realistic about your chances of surviving a crash in bad terrain or at night. If they aren't zero, they are very close to it.
I've flown everything from Champs and Cubs to Falcon 50s. I've been to aircraft boneyards as well. The key is that, in a controlled landing, you shouldn't end up hitting anything solid-- because you have CONTROL. Certainly there are times you can avoid it, but those times are actually less often than you would imagine. Trees, for instance, aren't actually solid (except for the trunk itself), but the branches absorb a lot of energy-- and absorbing the energy as gradually as possible is the key to survivability. There is a reason the FAA imposes a 61 knot maximum stall speed on single engine aircraft-- know why?
Absolutey, I've taken designs thru the certification process and the feeling by the FAA is that off airport landings at speeds greater than 61 knots aren't survivable. A few knots slower isn't going to make a big difference in something as fragile as an airplane. Remember 61 kts is 70 mph, and I wouldn't want to hit anything in an airplane at a highway speed. In a car you generally hit the brakes and scrub off a lot of speed before you hit something, accidents in cars at 70 mph aren't generally considered survivable if anything solid is hit. Cars only provide survivability in an impact with a solid object at speeds of 35 mph. According to the FAA statistics for 2005 (the last year that they have in the database) 78% of all GA fatalities occurred in the "off airport" environment. That means that a chute could be a factor in 78% of the fatalities that occurred that year (because you would ostensibly be high enough to use a chute). There were about the same amount of accidents off airport and on airport that year, but there were 5 times as many fatalities off airport as on airport. The fatality rate for off airport crashes is 33%. That means somebody gets killed in every third off airport accident. Frankly those odds suck. Lastly, if you had a choice of landing into trees, would you pick doing it in a plane with or without CAPS? I for sure know which one I'd pick since the odds of walking away from it from the CAPS airplane is probably really good, and the odds of even surviving the landing in a typical light plane into treetops is pretty poor.
I highly suspect that, but don't have any facts to back it up. Do you know that engine outs don't require a FAA accident report if safe landing? Not sure if ALL off fields require one. I could see the 33% stat representing fatalities of actual crashes off field, not including off field landings, which is what most are.
I don't think those statistics are apples-to-apples. A better comparison would be single engine fuel management accidents-- typically, if you run out of gas, you're still in controlled flight, and presumably you would pull the chute in those circumstances. According to the AOPA Nall report (http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/08nall.pdf, page 14), in 2007 there were 65 single engine fixed gear fuel exhaustion accidents, and 4 of those were fatal. But wait-- of the 65 total accidents, 3 were in seaplanes-- and 2 of those (fully half the fatal fuel exhaustion accidents!) were fatal. Thus, of 62 single engine, fixed gear, fuel management accidents in 2007, only two (2) were fatal.
that stat right there shows pretty convincingly that if everything on the plane is OK except power, then no matter day, night, IMC, VFR, forests, or mountains a controlled landing gives you high percentage of survival, looks to be higher than a parachute in that situation.
I remember well the chute deployment near Lewisville. Cirrus was proud that the pilot walked away. I remember laughing in the hangar how proud Cirrus was of the chute but quickly glazed over the aileron becoming detached from wing in normal flight causing loss of control of the plane. I see the report now lists " maintainence" ...
Yes, the 33% is the percentage of fatalities that occur in off field crashes. If there is no damage the FAA doesn't require an accident report if it results in an off field landing, although I am not sure if an incident report is required.
yes, then that fully supports your point about dangers of crashing into the ground, but I don't think it fully addresses controlled landing verse parachute. Every one of those crash fatalities I bet would have given a parachute a try in a second and many would have made it.
Lots of accidents are going to occur off airports. CFIT, for example, is by definition, off airport. So is the accident caused when Junior buzzes his girlfriend's house and crashes into the water tower. However, you need better data to determine if the parachute is even relevant-- that's why I like the fuel management subset.
I agree fully, and really the only point I wanted to make. The point above about fuel exhaustion being more representaive of the probability surviving a forced landing is completey vaild and I hadn't seen that data. One thing about the fuel exhaustion data is that if a pilot is flying at night over nasty places, he darn well is going to be a lot more careful in planning and not running out of fuel since pushing fuel capacity in that kind environment is just plain dumb. I don't think that whether or not a plane has a CAPS system would be the determining factor if I were buying one. I don't plan on crashing, and I'm sure most pilots don't, I think that we all tend to overestimate our capabilities until we realize our own mortality. I've had a couple of bad moments in the air that made me realize that if I or anybody else makes a mistake in an airplane that people can get killed. It's a sobering moment when you realize it and as a result, I'm very realistic about the odds of surviving an incident in an airplane. They stink. So the best thing you can do is know and maintain your airplane know the numbers, fly it within a safe envelope and don't do anything stupid. Do that you will live a long time...
I see myself two years ago in these comments about doubting the benefits of CAPS. As an operator of a fleet of FIKI equipped IFR-trainers in northern europe my opinion has changed completely. The benefits of the parachute are obvious. Most of the terrain we operate in is covered in 60ft high/2-3ft thick pine trees. Some of the scenarios: Engine failure in low IMC - CAPS (Feeling lucky about finding a spot when pop out of the cloud?) Engine failure at night -CAPS (Under six hours of daylight during the darkest part of the year. Forced landing at night is just the same as during the day - except that you can´t see anything?..Turn the landing light on, and if you don´t like what you see, turn it off?..) Anti-ice system failure - CAPS (Icing is encountered at least half of the year) Mid air - CAPS (very active training enviroment) I understand the sceptisism about the system, and especially about the marketing speak about it, but it really gives you solutions for some problems, that did not used to have any. Except quitting flight training in these latitudes.. Of course, on a nice day, with a nice field, you land on the field and wait for the farmer to offer his daughter to the dashing pilot who plowed his field for no charge. And then you plow her field..
