Airplane safety

[Weresmilodon]

Fel.

I just finished watching a program on National Geographic channel about various safety improvements in air-sea-land vehicles and buildings. One that caught my eye though, was the airplane parachute. Not for the passengers, but the plane itself. It’s manually launched (handle in the cockpit), and mostly meant for smaller private planes, not the big passenger planes. It's apparently already on the market for a reasonable price. (Though I don’t know for sure, not having a market to check)

Is this something Kit will be getting, or perhaps already have? I’d think Vil would do her best to get him one, if nothing else. A good reasonable way to improve safety, especially if there is a possibility of sabotage.


Oh, and unrelated, do you read Better Days? (http://www.jaynaylor.com/betterdays/) Jay announced on his lj a few days ago that the next chapter is the last. Man, I don’t even remember how many years this has been going on now. I’m gonna miss it.

[dellstart]

Fel.

I just finished watching a program on National Geographic channel about various safety improvements in air-sea-land vehicles and buildings. One that caught my eye though, was the airplane parachute. Not for the passengers, but the plane itself. It’s manually launched (handle in the cockpit), and mostly meant for smaller private planes, not the big passenger planes. It's apparently already on the market for a reasonable price. (Though I don’t know for sure, not having a market to check)

Is this something Kit will be getting, or perhaps already have? I’d think Vil would do her best to get him one, if nothing else. A good reasonable way to improve safety, especially if there is a possibility of sabotage.


Oh, and unrelated, do you read Better Days? (http://www.jaynaylor.com/betterdays/) Jay announced on his lj a few days ago that the next chapter is the last. Man, I don’t even remember how many years this has been going on now. I’m gonna miss it.

Dittos that's good webcomic!

[Spec8472]

One that caught my eye though, was the airplane parachute. Not for the passengers, but the plane itself.

The ones I've seen are only for very very light aircraft - single/twin seater. Not the larger one that Kit has.

[Fel]

Eclipse is the aircraft company that uses the airplane chute the most...they more or less perfected the design. It's a touted feature of the Eclipse 500 VLJ. Get in trouble, and instead of trying to make a landing, pop the chute. However, some "salty" pilots see the chute as a bad thing, for they feel many pilots are wussing out with the chute in situations where the jet is more than capable of being landed. But, I'm sure their opinion would change if THEY were the one facing a dead-stick situation or some other such emergency.

[miraborn]

Cirrus aircraft also has the chute on all their single-engine aircraft.

As for adding this to his plane, from what I know, the aircraft needs to be designed from the beginning to have this system. It is integrated into the airframe, and the skin has the harness hidden within it.

As a side-note, when the military (and others) test new prototype aircraft, a type of parachute is often mounted on the tail to be deployed to assist with spin recovery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(flig ... d_recovery