Ballistic Recovery Systems

I worked for a while in the Flight Test department at Cirrus Aircraft, the manufacturer who is probably best known for these systems (all planes they manufacture come with them). The picture on the right side of the Wikipedia page is of one of their first tests of the system. The test pilot who did that exact pictured test told me that it was a pretty exciting experience; they had done all the calculations and static load tests possible, but they couldn't be sure exactly what would happen until the 'pulled the handle' for the first time. The parachute straps could have pulled out of their mounting points, the parachute could have failed to fully inflate or gotten tangled on the empennage, etc. The test pilot had to wear his own parachute in case things went badly and he had to bail out of the plane (the test plane had a special system to blow the doors off to facility emergency egress). Happily it worked well, although the deployment is a little bumpy :) The chute system has a mechanically-activated rocket that busts out a panel over the chute tube which is intentionally weakly mounted, and then proceeds to pull the uninflated chute fully out through the open hole about 100 feet, and then there's a special 'slow-inflation' ring on the chute rigging to slow down the inflation of the chute so that it doesn't put excessive force on the chute mounting and/or hurt the passengers. To prevent serious injury to the passengers when the plane hits the ground (it's still moving at a good clip), the seatbelts have airbags and the base of the seat is a few inches of aluminum honeycomb to absorb energy. The landing gear and wings are also designed to fracture/crush in a way that reduces the amount of force transmitted to the passengers. Although it's not uncommon to walk away with broken limbs or some sort of back pain, it's better than the alternative :) Cirrus is currently working on a Very Light Jet, the 5-person + 2kid Vision SF50 (http://cirrusaircraft.com/vision/) which also has a parachute - but it's a lot bigger than the ones on their existing 4-person SR-20/22 prop planes! I can try to answer any questions as best as I can remember...

I'm taking flying lessons, and the Flight Design CTLS I'm in has one of these systems. I believe you can use it up to like 80 knots or more. I have to remember to take the pin out at the end of the run up, and back in when shutting down.

When they first came out, there was some reports that they they caused just as much loss of life as they prevented, but I think the stats are now in favor of them. They're not really meant to protect the plane but the pilot and passengers.

As far as a rule of thumb I think my instructor said that once something goes wrong in flight, it's the insurance company's plane, so just try like hell to survive and forget about aircraft damage. There have also been many incidents where the chute was used, and the plane eventually flew again.

As I was told when taking flight lessons and being introduced to this system, it's a device of absolute last resort, since you lose all control of the aircraft once you pop that chute. There's a lot of emergencies you can handle without having to pop the chute in an aircraft. Sadly, there are also a lot of emergencies where a chute would do you no good (such as stalling on approach or take off, the two phases of flight where most (56%) of crashes occur).

Fascinating tool though, and if I purchased a plane, I wouldn't mind having one for those "just in case" times. Of course, aircraft with this installed are generally over $200,000 new, so it's not on my radar anytime soon.

If I ever buy a light GA plane, I'd love to have something like this for additional safety. Unfortunately in GA, there are a lot of safety innovations which never get implemented, due to strict regulations and cost. Things like un-stallable/un-spinable airplanes (like the Ercoupe or the Long-EZ), could potentially make the dreaded spin on the base to final leg non-existent, but they aren't mainstream because they're too expensive to bring to market.

It's kind of a catch-22; people are afraid of flying because of safety issues, but you need scale to spread the costs of making planes safer.

*edit: corrected typo

There are some videos of these in use; they are very effective when used within the chute's operational parameters: when the airplane is at altitude and moving at an appropriate (not too fast) speed, particularly over harsh terrain.

However, like all emergency devices, they are not a panacea. They don't protect against one of the most common fatal GA accident scenarios: loss of control at low altitude (base/final turn when landing). In that case, there is not enough time for the parachute to inflate before the airplane hits the ground.

I'm all in favor of BRS being available as options and after-market STCs on all small airplanes, but we also need to make sure emergency training isn't reduced to just "pull the chute", since there's a lot that can still go wrong outside of the chute's operational parameters.

This particular standard feature has been a huge selling point for Cirrus, makers of a very nice, very expensive, high performance aircraft that has been heavily marketed toward wealthy, low time pilots that in many instances have no business being at the controls of such a challenging airplane. There is an argument to be made that this feature has created overconfident pilots that use the chute as an excuse for making otherwise poor or dangerous go/no-go decisions in the face of weather, terrain, etc. Cirrus' accident rate has been higher than the average for comparable aircraft, and it probably doesn't help that they used the chute as an excuse to skip proper spin testing of the aircraft.

I've always been shocked about the danger of general aviation. I always see needless deaths, and it makes me nervous. I would love to pursue this as a hobby, but stories like this:

http://www.wbir.com/story/news/2014/02/03/fire-chief-no-surv...

make me think we need a ballistic recovery system.

I'm surprised nobody has linked a very famous deployment of a ballistic parachute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXQKaxp6Rlk

In the above video, a pilots propeller hits another aircraft's glider towline which then wraps itself around the prop and engine disabling it.

I'm not a pilot, but this probably would have been fatal if it wasnt for the BRS.

From a physics point of view, how would this scale up to commercial jets? Presumably you would need multiple parachutes to distribute the load, but still, how large would they have to be to support that weight?