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Comment by nopzor | Hacker News Reader

awesome to see the first real world example of a caps parachute deployment on the vision jet working out well.

the caps parachute results in “a good day for the passengers — walk away, bad day for the insurance company — plane will never fly again”

the vision jet also has a “safe return” feature that will 100% autonomously land at the nearest suitable airport.

both brs and safe return are designed to be initiated by a passenger, in the event of pilot incapacitation.

i’ve had the pleasure of flying on a vision jet before — it’s a really cool aircraft that flies almost as fast and high as much more expensive jets. and can be easily (realistically) flown by a single pilot.

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> i’ve had the pleasure of flying on a vision jet before — it’s a really cool aircraft that flies almost as fast and high as much more expensive jets

It’s a really cool aircraft but It’s nowhere close to the speed or service ceiling of most private jets.

Here’s Citationmax departing LAX in a vision jet. It’s a beautiful video to watch but it seems like he is struggling to reach the Standard Instrument Departure (SID) altitudes for each waypoint, only able to do about 100 KIAS in the climb.

https://youtu.be/DVXob_B3Cck

Contrast that to his later videos in the Citation CJ3 which looks like a SpaceX rocket in comparison.

Even Premier 1 Driver’s smallish jet drastically outperforms the SF50.

> It’s a really cool aircraft but It’s nowhere close to the speed or service ceiling of most private jets.

there's a recent story of a vision jet pilot who's been putting "treat me like a turboprop, I don't mind" in the comments of flight plans to let controllers know what they can expect performance wise from him (and to make them laugh).

Actually, the insurance company would rather you pull the chute too... an airframe is a lot cheaper than multiple wrongful death lawsuits.

Can you sue your own insurance company for wrongful death?

No, but if you're carrying passengers their families can sue your liability insurance provider

It’s a cool plane but very much does not “fly almost as fast” as traditional jets. It’s super slow and sluggish in that regard and causes headaches for ATC because it can’t fly as fast or climb as fast as other jets. Think everyone cruising down a highway with nice spacing doing 65 MPH and then one person is doing 45 MPH… that’s what ATC has to work around.

It's in a strange spot because practically every other single engine jet aircraft is military, and I imagine it's tricky to drop a bigger engine in the vision jet without sacrificing cabin/cargo space. I liked the other comment comparing it to a turboprop. I'd say it's performance is something like turboprop+ but it's clearly not in the same category as other small passenger jets.

Agree it's awesome. Although the cruising speed is around 300 knots where a small bizjet would be over 400. That is more comparable to a fast propeller plane.

I am sure the plane can fly again on most cases, they just don't want the liability and they want to put "pressure" on the pilots to only deploy it when necessary.

A Cirrus pilot that loses an engine at a safe altitude will not think of deploying it because the plane will be gone.

I don’t think that’s the way insurance companies look at it - as I recall, I think they actually waive the deductible in the event of a chute deployment to encourage use of the system. Paying for an airframe is a lot cheaper than the inevitable wrongful death lawsuits.

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