A testament to our jaded modern times: I tried to skip ahead in the first video, because you know, 4 minutes was too long for me to spend watching an airplane parachute down out of the sky and into the Pacific Ocean. Get to the action, amirite? Then when I skipped ahead, the video got stuck. I tried a few more times, then gave up and went on to the next story. Because you know, it's just a plane falling out of the sky straight into the swirling ocean...caught on video.
Wow -- It was cool to see they had parachutes on the plane itself. Is this common on smaller planes these days? I've always wondered if/why airliners couldn't do something like this.
Outside of most Cirrus aircraft, they're not standard. They work pretty well on light and ultralight (single engine) aircraft.
Think of the extraordinary size and weight a chute or series of chutes would be for a short haul 737-sized aircraft. The cost of lugging those around across a fleet would be absolutely prohibitive. There's also little reason for this type of safety mechanism for such passenger jets. Commercial twin or quad engine planes are extraordinarily safe, and offer many more redundancies than a tiny single engine plane.
Ideally you'd only need chutes big enough for the cabin and that it would detach and parachute down. Would probably still be prohibitively expensive, but a fun thought exercise.
More importantly, the force of the parachute(s) braking the plane would put a lot of stress on the plane structure and it's likely to break apart since it's not designed with sagging or hogging in mind (to borrow from naval architecture where those forces are explicitly modelled due to wave action.)
I believe you also suffer from square-cube effects. Take a light airplane with a parachute, and scale up all the linear dimensions by a factor of two. You now have something with four times the drag (drag is proportional to cross section) but eight times the weight (weight is proportional to volume). That means your terminal velocity increases by 40% (proportional to the square root of mass/area). In short, if you take a system designed for a SR-22 and just scale it up for a 737, the jet would descend much faster under the canopy, probably to a degree that it would no longer be safe. The parachute would have to be proportionally much larger still.
And as you say, they wouldn't add much safety because there isn't much more to be had. I can only think of two large jet crashes offhand that would have potentially benefitted (the DC-10 that crashed in Sioux City, and that Japanese 747 where the tail fell off) and that's from a period of decades.
They actually don't help much, and arguably make things worse, because pilots that have them do things they would otherwise shy away from, like fly over mountains in marginal weather. Cirrus has only had one or maybe a couple more legitimate saves.
Most airplane accidents happen on takeoff/landing or inadvertent terrain collision in bad weather. Neither of which a parachute would help.
If his coining the 10th rule of programming wasn't enough for me to want to meet him add in the aviation stuff and he's definitely on my top list of people I'd want to meet.
You really don't know what you're talking about. There is no evidence that the parachute entices pilots to take greater risks (if I'm wrong, by all means cite some), any more than car seat belts entice drivers to take more risks. Furthermore, "As of 25 January 2015 there have been 51 saves with 104 survivors in aircraft equipped with the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS)." (https://www.cirruspilots.org/copa/safety_programs/w/safety_p...)
I think these systems are banned in the UK as they're explosive devices and the risk of them going off on the ground was deemed more dangerous than their benefit. /noresearch
A related question I had was whether the Coast Guard resents doing this sort of work - "ugh, another idiot who got himself into trouble." In particular in the context of sailors and kiteboarders who get stuck in SF bay.
The answer, which surprised me, was no - at least not institutionally (according to a friend who was in the coast guard for a time.) Turns out 90% of the work of the coast guard ends up being search and rescue type stuff, and they all know that this sort of thing is exactly what they signed up for and appreciate getting to "do" something instead of just patrolling.
I've gotten the impression they get a bit annoyed when people do stupid things and need rescuing but have no problems with rescuing people that encountered problems doing something that is normally safe and common.
They almost never charge. But contrary to lutorm, they could. I recall at least one story of folks who were extraordinary negligent in getting stranded in national parks and were charged for a very large helicopter search and rescue operation. I can't find the correct article for victim rescue operations, but I assume the same reasoning applies as in the Law of Salvage where someone who rescues cargo is entitled to reward even if they don't sign a contract:
However, this article uses the recent example of the Carnival cruise rescue to give some very good arguments why the Coast Guard is so reluctant to charge.
There are no corresponding rules for rendering assistance to people on land, so I'm not sure the NP comparison is valid.
I definitely had the impression that, like the article you linked, there was a "maritime tradition that holds that the duty to render assistance at sea to those in need is a universal obligation of the entire maritime community". Maybe they can try to recoup their costs later, but that was not my (uninformed) impression. Or maybe things are different in national vs international waters?
I don't know about the coast guard, but rescuing people in need is part of standard maritime law. The SOLAS (International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea) Convention contains "... an obligation for all vessels' masters to offer assistance to those in distress".
Pretty amazing video! It looks like the parachute caused something of a hazard once the craft was in the water. It seemed to drag it along and contribute to it rolling over when the pilot was sitting on the wing – that looked like it could have been very troublesome. Glad it all worked out!
Also, that survival raft looks pretty small! Does each passenger get one too?
Assuming this is a part 91 flight, when flying overwater more than 30 minutes flight time or 100 nm from short, they are legally required to have on board:
* A life preserver for each occupant of the plane
* Enough liferafts for all occupants [however they can share the same one as long as they're not exceeding the rated capacity and buoyancy]
* A flare for each liferaft
* One portable, floating, water-resistant emergency radio beacon
* A lifeline
* Survival kits attached to each liferaft
they don't come with the airplane, but since pilots are trained to be paranoid, I imagine they're a relatively common purchase among guys flying over the ocean.
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Think of the extraordinary size and weight a chute or series of chutes would be for a short haul 737-sized aircraft. The cost of lugging those around across a fleet would be absolutely prohibitive. There's also little reason for this type of safety mechanism for such passenger jets. Commercial twin or quad engine planes are extraordinarily safe, and offer many more redundancies than a tiny single engine plane.
And as you say, they wouldn't add much safety because there isn't much more to be had. I can only think of two large jet crashes offhand that would have potentially benefitted (the DC-10 that crashed in Sioux City, and that Japanese 747 where the tail fell off) and that's from a period of decades.
Most airplane accidents happen on takeoff/landing or inadvertent terrain collision in bad weather. Neither of which a parachute would help.
Source: Pilot, skydiver aviation nerd.
Philip Greenspun is a pretty accomplished pilot and has some good writings on it: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/cirrus-sr20
If his coining the 10th rule of programming wasn't enough for me to want to meet him add in the aviation stuff and he's definitely on my top list of people I'd want to meet.
Source: Pilot, skydiver, Cirrus owner.
I think these systems are banned in the UK as they're explosive devices and the risk of them going off on the ground was deemed more dangerous than their benefit. /noresearch
The answer, which surprised me, was no - at least not institutionally (according to a friend who was in the coast guard for a time.) Turns out 90% of the work of the coast guard ends up being search and rescue type stuff, and they all know that this sort of thing is exactly what they signed up for and appreciate getting to "do" something instead of just patrolling.
Deleted Comment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_salvage
However, this article uses the recent example of the Carnival cruise rescue to give some very good arguments why the Coast Guard is so reluctant to charge.
http://gcaptain.com/cost-rescue/
(Note that Carnival has not charged for using their cruise ships to pick people up in the past.)
There are no corresponding rules for rendering assistance to people on land, so I'm not sure the NP comparison is valid.
I definitely had the impression that, like the article you linked, there was a "maritime tradition that holds that the duty to render assistance at sea to those in need is a universal obligation of the entire maritime community". Maybe they can try to recoup their costs later, but that was not my (uninformed) impression. Or maybe things are different in national vs international waters?
Also, that survival raft looks pretty small! Does each passenger get one too?
Assuming this is a part 91 flight, when flying overwater more than 30 minutes flight time or 100 nm from short, they are legally required to have on board:
* A life preserver for each occupant of the plane * Enough liferafts for all occupants [however they can share the same one as long as they're not exceeding the rated capacity and buoyancy] * A flare for each liferaft * One portable, floating, water-resistant emergency radio beacon * A lifeline * Survival kits attached to each liferaft
If anything, it's surviving in the water that is difficult, especially in cold waters.