The Vision Jet is also the only turbine (jet) engine powered aircraft with such a system.
It also boasts the Garmin Safe Return system; where the autopilot lands the aircraft in case of Pilot incapacitation - doing everything from radio calls, selecting the appropriate airport and runway, flying the approach and landing to a stop.
It's not wasted hardware even if not used. The aircraft already has a flight control system capable of flying from waypoint to waypoint and landing. Safe Return adds a layer of software able to compute and enter a course, while squawking Mayday and playing canned emergency messages on the guard frequency. New hardware is just a radio altimeter for use in landing, and the ability to lower the landing gear under computer control.
OEFGR could have used that. Their autopilot just continued to fly straight until they ran out of fuel and spiraled down into the sea.
But does it run Doom?
Unlike the rocket ejector seat in a fighter jet, CAPS cannot save you very close to the ground. The ejector seat in a modern fighter is rated for zero/zero ie you could pull the handle from a plane that's just sat on the ground motionless, it would still eject you upward and you'd probably survive. CAPS is intended to be used at two thousand feet AGL (ie above the ground)
Automation and chutes are fine but we keep seeing incidents where lack of judgement, planning or basic stick and rudder skills were contributory.
Not any more, but Cirrus introduced this technology to general aviation.
A photo from the prop version, post deployment. You can see how the straps are embedded in. Neat system.
Cirrus’s transition training emphasises pulling the chute - the seats and airframe are designed to absorb the vertical impact and protect the people on board. Most other aircraft you learn to pick a field to glide into, or do spin / unusual attitude training to recover from them. The chute is essentially a get out of jail free card for when you don’t have the options for any of those things.
Insurance companies DO love it. Some even waive the deductible if you pull.
The article is about the Cirrus Vision Jet, not the Cirrus SR22 propeller-driven aircraft.
One additional feature safety would be terrain recovery where if it detects you are unconscious, the plane would automatically pull out of the dive or avoid terrain obstacles (like side of a mountain) and place itself in a holding pattern. Taking a step further, the plane would identify nearest field without traffic or powerlines and deploy the chutes to land itself.
The last two layers are really nice to haves, its already incredible to have chutes readily available in private jets. Now its tough to argue that flying is inherently dangerous with these extra layers of last resort measures.
Having said that I do think cheaper alternatives to this Cirrus jet already exists, nothing wrong with propeller planes either. My goal would be to be able to do bush flying, landing on top of mountain fields, camping for a while and then flying back home.
The comments so far seem to presume the parachute is the only thing required to keep you safe. Statistically there’s two engine failures every 100,000 hours in single engine pistons. That’s incredibly low. Most pilots are lucky to make 1000 hours in a lifetime.
The thing that is actually going to kill most people is flying a perfectly serviceable aircraft into the side of a hill in bad weather, hitting wires, or mishandling on base turn and stalling.
The previous comments about the parachute being ineffective for takeoff and landing are partially correct. The minimum altitude for successful CAPS (parachute) deployment is 500ft AGL, but it has been used much lower successfully (sorry don’t have the figures but I think 200-300ft).
They market the CAPS like it’s the only thing required to make flying safe but in reality you are more likely to kill yourself than the airplane killing you; and a parachute won’t stop that.
I looked into the stats before I started flying and iirc this is not the case for private aircraft on a per-hour basis. In fact, private aircraft may have been riskier than motorcycle.
This kind of feature exists, as Cirrus Safe Return Emergency Autoland:
https://cirrusaircraft.com/story/introducing-safe-return-eme...
Also I don’t understand your point about the insurance.
There are a whole lot of scenarios where you might pull the parachute but have a decent chance of getting down safely.
So, the parachute optimizes for occupant survival, but not survival of property. Insurers are in a conflicted scenario here: lowering injury claims but increasing property losses.
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.
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.
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.
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).
A Cirrus pilot that loses an engine at a safe altitude will not think of deploying it because the plane will be gone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBCUQlF3MMU
But obviously 10x better than the alternative.
https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20220909-...
Not really the parachutes fault...
Furthermore, most commercial aviation disasters occur at low altitude and the ones that happen at high altitude tend to be too catastrophic for chutes to be of value. (If something bad happens at high altitude that doesn't destroy the plane it tends to make it back.) Off the top of my head I can only think of three crashes where they could have used chutes--two where the hydraulics were damaged by high energy events (and would the chutes have worked properly??) and one fuel failure due to hijacking.
Further, commercial passenger aircraft are already very safe due to system redundancy not practical on smaller aircraft. Would a ballistic parachute system help with many accidents in this category? I would be willing to bet not. Ballistic parachute systems are not a magic bullet - they require substantial altitude/time to deploy (as much as 900 feet in a spin, for example). Many substantial aviation accidents happen during takeoff and landing below or near these altitudes.
Would you pay a multiple of your current airfare for an extremely small (practical) reduction in travel risk?
Looking at the CAPS pulls on SR22## aircraft, the primary reasons are almost always either 1) pilot error or 2) engine issues.
Getting to the point of being insurable in a VisionJet is likely no small feat, though I admit I have no idea what the minimums and/or ratings required are to obtain an affordable policy. I am expecting that a low-time pilot is not going to be able to afford the insurance.
Turbine engines are notably reliable, so am curious if there was some other kind of issue.
In any case, glad they are OK and am interested to see the NTSB report someday in the future as to the cause.
https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20220909-...
You are doing that every time you climb in an aircraft if it has a FADEC.
> The Cirrus line of aircraft have been flying for 20 years and although most people in aviation know they have full aircraft parachutes, it's fair to ask how effective these have been. With more than 90 uses of the so-called CAPS, has the system really saved lives? In this video, AVweb's Paul Bertorelli analyzes the record.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT58pzY41wA
Concludes that parachutes a generally a good thing, and even though the Cirrus aircraft fleet has grown from 5000 to 7000 airplanes over the last ten years (12m30s), the anual fatality numbers have stay the same and so have overall annual accidents.
The first few years didn't see much improvement, probably because the training didn't emphasize it as much, but since ~2013 the advice is generally "if you're experiencing issues just pull the 'chute". There is a cost to fixing the aircraft afterwards, but it will be you paying it and not your widow or estate.
The Cirrus SF50, which was the subject of this story, is the top selling light jet by a large margin too for many of the same reasons. It provides the best safety features, technology, comfort and price - though admittedly it does sacrifice performance to achieve the other attributes. This is aviation and everything is a collection finely balanced trade-offs.
[1] https://gama.aero/wp-content/uploads/2021ShipmentReport-02-2...
(Not saying an uncontrolled landing couldn't do the same, just curious about the history)
Cirrus really revamped their training and that had a big impact. They also changed training to really emphasize chute pulls, which had probably led to some hair trigger pilot pulls but has also saved lives.
Will be interesting to see what happened here when all the details come out.
-- demo - cool --
