Do pilots of small aircraft consider this in practice?
(As someone who doesn't fly, it's obviously an interesting thought experiment as a means to survive, but I would imagine most pilots are going to be looking to recover or land the aircraft, not bail out of it?)
No. Not unless it's required (doing aerobatics work requires it, which is rather more likely to overstress the aircraft than regular mostly straight and level flying).
Small airplanes just don't fall apart in flight (exceptions like the Piper wing spar in training duty are just that - exceptions, and typically lead to a lot of exception requirements). They only come apart if you've already screwed up a lot - usually lost control flying into a cloud without an instrument rating and ended up in a graveyard spiral (nose down, steep bank, you either hit the ground at speed or pull the wings off first, and then hit the ground at speed).
I know a lot of GA pilots. I know none who fly with parachutes.
Things like the Cirrus airframe chute are interesting, and have saved some people, but Cirrus seems to attract a large number of people who outfly their skill level and get themselves into a lot of trouble. Sometimes the parachute helps, but they shouldn't have been there in the first place.
General wisdom is that once the engine quits, the airframe is the insurance company's problem. However, an awful lot of the time, the pilot is able to perform a safe off-airport landing with minimal or no damage to the aircraft. You can safely land on roads, in fields, in random desert, etc, and walk away with a perfectly usable airplane. A typical single engine GA aircraft only lands at about 50mph. It really doesn't take much distance to get down and, if not stopped, at least slow enough that you don't really hurt yourself or the airframe if you go off the end of [whatever].
There also seems to be a pretty good overlap between motorcycle riders and pilots. Find a middle aged man riding 10k+ miles/yr on a BMW or similar, and there's a very good chance he's a pilot too.
On their Vision Jets they also have emergency autoland, which is a blessing under FAA conditions where realistically some elderly pilots are going to die up there, leaving anybody else in the plane to get down on their own. Is it possible to talk a zero experience lay person down in a single engine plane when their pilot buddy slumped over suddenly in level flight? I wouldn't bet money on them even operating the radio correctly. But the emergency autoland can put that plane back on the ground pretty reliably, maybe even in time for the pilot to receive medical attention if they're merely incapacitated not yet dead.
General aviation is about as safe as riding a motorbike. You're trained to not get into that situation in the first place -- it's a very fishy video for many different reasons. We plan for eventualities! Pilots assume that everything _will_ fail and ideally don't let themselves get into a position where a parachute is needed. I've been in a glider (ASK-21) under tow from a tug plane (a Piper Pawnee) where it lost an engine cylinder at exactly "the worst point" on the way up. The pilot waved us off immediately, and we both executed our well-practiced "eventualities" plan for that airfield, with no incident whatsoever. An investigation showed that the engine casing on the Pawnee had cracked, despite recent inspection.
But bail-out rigs are much smaller than normal skydiving rigs; the latter would be uncomfortable to wear while operating the plane. A bail-out rig is thinner, shaped more like a seat cushion, and contains only a single parachute, often a non-steerable round (which can reliably open much lower).
Example of typical bail-out rig: https://www.summitparachutesystems.com/pilot-emergency-back-...
This is not true. I've watched numerous youtube videos of pilots flying skydivers and I've never seen them wearing a parachute. Flight Chops, for example. The pilot in question in the videos was chief instructor for a flight safety training company.
Thus, it probably depends on the aircraft, and possibly the process by which the owner got FAA approval to modify the door.
Occasionally a student pilot will inadvertently get into stall/spin (only allowed at a proper altitude) during stall training. The value of the student getting into the stall spin, and flight instructor calmly saying "what are you going to do?" is way higher than a parachute. Low altitude stall/spins are essentially not recoverable (in time) and you die. A parachute won't help you, you're not getting out of the plane soon enough. And a parachute as a fallback for proper stall/spin recovery technique to me is idiotic. Don't get in a stall spin low to the ground, and if you have the altitude you recover. Either you can't parachute out or you don't need to. That's the bottom line.
Further, my confidence getting out of the plane with a parachute on is essentially zero. Whereas I know I can recover from a stall/spin. In fact, normally trimmed, most planes have positive static and dynamic stability, and will recover from a stall spin on their own if you just relax back pressure on the yoke. Which I'd have to do to parachute away from the plane. So hilariously, by jumping from the plane, the plane has a very good chance of recovering on its own, obviating the need to jump.
Now for aerobatics training, it's different because plausibly you could stress the airplane enough to break it. At which point it might be uncontrollable enough you'd need to parachute out to survive. And flight over hazardous terrain is another plausible scenario although I'd argue that's just plain bad flight planning. WTF are you doing planning a flight where you can't glide to a road? I've done quite a lot of mountain flying and it's not difficult to plane this, at least in the lower 48. In Alaska and Canada, I'm sure there's a bit of a chuckle the idea of being in gliding distance of a road or some flat enough surface.
But for the other 95% of flights going on, you're not considering a parachute. No. I've never worn one.
So I just saw a video on YouTube which analyzed an incident of a plane outbound from Aspen which was flown into the ground. I'm sure if the terrain were about 6000 ft lower it would not have been considered hazardous. They simply failed to get high enough to go over the pass, and when they tried to turn around and give up they hit the ground. So the point is, they couldn't fly under power safely back to the airport, gliding wasn't a factor.
You can't fight physics. Normally aspirated planes are seriously underpowered at high altitude. It's shocking. And they don't have much excess power to start with.
This pilot made a fatal mistake much earlier than the actual accident by not becoming deeply uncomfortable at the low altitude perniciously taking away all options. He assumed the rate of climb would get them over the pass. A small tailwind makes this even worse as it reduces the time you gave for climb.
Every time I fly in the mountains I see planes well below my altitude, thousands of feet. I've slowly build up a store of power and thus choices, including more time to troubleshoot, more time to announce position which is a line of sight transmission.
It's not simple failure to get high enough. That was not the fatal mistake. It's multiple mistakes, the accumulation of which results in no more choices. Poor flight planning, possibly an inhibition of an ATP to ask "lower ranked" local pilots about various routes, and waiting too long to abort. They lacked an abort plan. They could not have been asking "what do I do right now if the powerplant fails?" Because they not only accepted going passed the point of managing a powerplant failure, to the point where they had no options even with a fully operating powerplant. There was nothing wrong with that airplane. It was all errors in judgement that lead to no choice but a crash.
Having flown in and out of Aspen many times myself, I have never used Independence pass. I've opted for the down valley northwest route for climb out, then north, and finally east to Corona/Rollins pass. Many choices before, during, and after pass crossing. A local pilot would have given alternatives to Independence, and their reasoning. A local flight instructor would have reminded them about density altitude, leaning, and even the option of not taking off fully fueled in order to improve climb performance, and fully fuel on the other side of the mountain range instead.
Colorado sees this same lack of awareness of the effects of altitude with hikers all the time too. Folks from New York and Florida and California, regularly climb 14ers in fall and unwittingly get stuck in snow storms while Denver is clear as a bell, having no imagination at all for treachery. And their families are appalled when the search and rescue is called off because it's even too treacherous for S&R operations. Happens every year.
That reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber
I did not enquire about what subsection of the regulations made this requirement or any of the qualifications of equipment. The pilot did have a parachute on as well.
I'm glad it turned out okay. Personally, I've learned over time that plenty of people will sacrifice my safety or financial risk for their convenience. Now I'm rarely satisfied by them saying "Don't worry, it will be fine. Everyone does is this way." I'm glad that I've learned to stick up for myself under that kind of pressure.
So, it seems odd to me.