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Comment by vosper | Hacker News Reader

Do the parachutes work reliably?

Presumably once it's deployed you lose all control, and land wherever, which might be okay if you land on a field, but what about a lake?

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There is a joke among Cirrus owners that the way to deploy the parachute is to pull it with your right hand, and then call your insurance agent with your left hand. The implication is that the aircraft is likely a total loss from that point.

Of the ~100 Cirrus parachute deployments to date, about 15 planes were repaired and put back into service. There were about 150 survivors and 1 fatality in those deployments. Cirrus says deployments have never failed when the system was being used within limits. I wasn't able to find the circumstances of that death, but the numbers show that yes, the parachutes are reliable.

As you point out, they can't protect you from whatever you land on -- lake, volcano, piranhas, etc.

I was shown a video by my father who owns a Cirrus of a parachuting plane on fire. It may have been the fatality. I believe the parachute works beautifully, but you have to make sure you use it correctly.

Yeah but who really cares if the plane is a loss? If you pull that lever, you are doing it because you would otherwise probably die. I'd say that's worth a total loss.

I doubt anyone does care. You might have misinterpreted the joke as advice not to use the mechanism when it's needed. It's just making light of the next step after surviving having crashed your plane.

Don't have the report handy on tbe phone, but it was in a dive in imc over the sierras exceeded Vne shredded the chute.

It's likely Cirrus doesn't count that incident as a failure because it was past Vne.

Here's a video of the company's piston-engined model landing under parachute in the middle of the Pacific ocean, taken by a Coast Guard rescue aircraft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBCUQlF3MMU

I assume it's a last ditch manouvre. Planes are designed to glide if the engine fails [0] - so you'd do your best to get over land / safe and then pull the parachute.

But also I assume if it did land on water - you might have a short amount of time to get out. At least you're not crashing into the water at 100 mph.

[0]: https://www.quora.com/Can-a-passenger-airplane-glide-if-all-...

Duh, I forgot about gliding. I read the article as "if anything goes wrong, just pop the parachute", but of course you'd try to glide and land it somewhere safely, first.

Something really has to seriously go wrong for you to want to pull that lever. Once you do, as you said, you are totally at the mercy of this parachute system. It will land you where it lands you, and if something goes wrong with it, you are pretty much screwed. If the single engine goes out, you can still operate the plane as a glider and have some control over where and how it lands. I'd rather go this route than chance a parachute system that disrupts the natural lift of the aircraft for almost any situation except some kind of very serious control surface issue.

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