NTSB Identification: ERA11FA414

105 seconds sound like an eternity if you are on fire.
 
tonycondon said:
105 seconds sound like an eternity if you are on fire.
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It is.....there was another thread that linked an AOPA video about a CFI who experienced a fire in a 172RG. He got the plane down and survived, although IIRC his leg was burned pretty badly. They were below 2000' AGL when it happened and he said it took them about 45 secs from discovering the fire to getting on the ground.
 
scottd said:
But every second counts...
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When you're on fire, I agree -- which is why I suggested keeping the CAPS option in your back pocket until it's your only chance for survival. If you can get down faster with a Vne emergency descent, I think that's a better choice as long as you aren't getting toxic fumes, at least to the point where you have to pull the chute because either you feel you're passing out or you see there's no good place to land it and you're reaching the bottom of the CAPS envelope.

That said, there are so many variables, that I don't think anyone can have a predetermined choice between Vne descent and immediate CAPS actuation. You'll have to make that choice when it happens based on the situation as it develops. All you can do in advance is itemize the considerations.
 
scottd said:
That's assuming that you haven't passed out first and you can slow down quick enough. Not me. The energy difference of the crash at 65 knots (assuming you are able to "grease" it in at that speed) verses the energy at 17 knots under the chute (with seats designed for this impact) is huge.
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Knowing how many more Gs the human body can take from the front as opposed to from underneath honestly I'd take the 65knot head on. But that's just me.

Yes the Cirrus seats crush in a CAPS impact but I also have seatbelts (and in many Cirrus an airbag) for a frontal hit.
 
scottd said:
Yes, I've heard the ATC tapes with this accident and he was indeed well aware of the situation. I just wish ATC would add into their procedure when working a Cirrus, "Cirrus 1234B, consider activating the chute."
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Please no, desicions like that should be at the discresion of the pilot and only the pilot. I don't want the suggestion from atc to lead to an inpropper deployment. Only the pilot is the position to decide if it's needed but coming from ATC in the heat of the moment it could be taken as an instruction.
 
A little off topic, but in a fire is Vne really a limitation?
 
scottd said:
Too many Cirrus pilots have died with that thinking. It doesn't take too much math to understand that the kinetic energy is proportional to the velocity squared. So, you'd rather risk a crash that has the kinetic energy that is an order of magnitude greater? Really? Not me. There have been way too many Cirrus pilots walk away from a crash after coming down under the chute with NO injuries as proof that it is highly survivable.
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Same risk I take when I get in my car, so yes I'll take the frontal hit not that the chute doesn't work, just that I don't view it as a get out of jail free card, just another nice tool to have in my bag of tricks.
 
Pehraps I should also say that i'll take the RISK of the frontal hit, the idea is to not hit anything, but know that it might happen
 
Skylane81E said:
Yes and no, the plane can go faster but acirrus (or any plane for that matter) isn't fire proof so structure is being damaged by the flames.
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That was my point. Why not decent as fast as you can rather than being concerned with the ASI? This is a fire were talking here and not any other emergency for which I understand respecting Vne.
 
Because you don't know where the plane will break, and if you break it you're done, out of options, strart to pray

That and you don't want to train at speeds over vne and should do it just like you trained
 
Skylane81E said:
Because you don't know where the plane will break, and if you break it you're done, out of options, strart to pray

That and you don't want to train at speeds over vne and should do it just like you trained
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So if I'm at 12,000 feet in a plane with BRS you advocate a 4,000 fpm decent? Not sure I agree with the logic. Without BRS, I may also be likely risk exceeding Vne depending upon several factors. Vne is a certificated limit, not absolute.
 
Jaybird180 said:
That was my point. Why not decent as fast as you can rather than being concerned with the ASI? This is a fire were talking here and not any other emergency for which I understand respecting Vne.
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What part of Vne are you not understanding?

If you don't respect Vne, you may very well break the airplane when you go to pull out of your emergency dive. That would be rather counter-productive.

You really aren't gaining anything by diving the airplane above redline - Assuming you don't break the airplane, you will ultimately end up low the the ground and a hell of alot of speed to bleed off in order to land.

You can accomplish an extremely fast , but controlled descent without getting near Vne. I can literally fall out of the sky in a light twin and never exceed Vlo/Vle.
 
Jaybird180 said:
Without BRS, I may also be likely risk exceeding Vne depending upon several factors. Vne is a certificated limit, not absolute.
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Jaybird, have you done any emergency descent training?

There is no reason you can't descend at 4000 fpm without getting anywhere near redline.
 
Fearless Tower said:
Jaybird, have you done any emergency descent training?

There is no reason you can't descend at 4000 fpm without getting anywhere near redline.
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Only the stuff Student pilots get. You mean that's not enough? (tongue in cheek)
 
Jaybird180 said:
So if I'm at 12,000 feet in a plane with BRS you advocate a 4,000 fpm decent? Not sure I agree with the logic. Without BRS, I may also be likely risk exceeding Vne depending upon several factors. Vne is a certificated limit, not absolute.
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IIRC the plane NEW did vne+ 10% that's with a test pilot in a new, never repaired plane at gross weight, that isn't on fire. If you want to gamble your life that YOU can still get the plane to do it go ahead. I'll stick with what I know I can get the plane to do.
 
Jaybird180 said:
Only the stuff Student pilots get. You mean that's not enough? (tongue in cheek)
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I honestly don't remember how much I got for my initial PPL, but emergency descent training was part of the MEL addon and I've had to do it for every rating and Flight Review since.
 
Skylane81E said:
IIRC the plane NEW did vne+ 10% that's with a test pilot in a new, never repaired plane at gross weight, that isn't on fire. If you want to gamble your life that YOU can still get the plane to do it go ahead. I'll stick with what I know I can get the plane to do.
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I never said exceeding Vne would be uppermost in my mind.
 
It should be out of it, an emergency isn't the time to become a test pilot.

If you ever have one you'll understand
 
Skylane81E said:
If you ever have one you'll understand
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You have an opportunity now to help me (and others reading) "shift fire" so to speak before this area of unpreparedness is revealed.

I always say, stuff happens to those unprepared and rarely to those prepared, ready and able.
 
If you go past Vne, and something breaks (like the elevator), you're likely to find yourself going too fast to deploy the chute with no way to slow down, so I think I'd limit it to Vne, which still gets you down more than twice as fast as the chute.
 
There is already so much happening when the poo and prop meet, and your first job is not to make things worse, exceeding vne is a good way to make things worse
 
scottd said:
Ilan Reich who I would call a good friend owned a Cirrus and blacked out for a short period of time while in flight. Instead of attempting to risk a second black out, he chose to use the chute which put him in the Hudson River.
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Hudson? Or Potomac? I think this is the accident I had heard about and the name sounds familiar, but I thought it was the Potomac. :dunno:

scottd said:
There have been 26 pilots that activated CAPS and 50 people have survived as a result. If you look at the fatal Cirrus accidents alone, 46 of 74 Cirrus pilots who died had the opportunity (time and altitude) to use CAPS, but did not. They perished. I believe that most of them (if not all) would still be alive today had they used CAPS.
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Just curious - Are you including the CFIT accidents in the "had the opportunity" group?

Ron Levy said:
If you go past Vne, and something breaks (like the elevator), you're likely to find yourself going too fast to deploy the chute with no way to slow down, so I think I'd limit it to Vne, which still gets you down more than twice as fast as the chute.
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That sounds like the best answer. If it takes 105 seconds under CAPS from 3000 feet, that's 35 seconds per 1000 feet. On the 12,000 foot descent that Jaybird mentions, if I'm on fire I'm going to come down at Vne (7000 FPM) and that'll take a minute and a half to get to 1500 AGL, followed by slowing down to CAPS deployment speed (135 KIAS IIRC), followed by CAPS deployment and 53 more seconds under canopy which is probably the fastest, safest way to get from 1500 AGL and 135 KIAS to on the ground.

If you pulled the CAPS at 12000 feet, that's 420 seconds - 7 minutes - to get to the ground. I bet a Cirrus slows from Vne to CAPS deployment speed in a lot less than 4 minutes and 37 seconds which is the remaining difference between these two techniques...
 
Ron Levy said:
Nobody "advocated" it, but someone asked "why not" if you were on fire and needed to get down ASAP. I think that someone got the answer.
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OK -- unless you're in a slippery airplane (Mooney, Bonanza, Cirrus) exceeding Vne ain't easy -- I'm sure most pilots would be uncomfortable with the required descent angle.
 
dmccormack said:
OK -- unless you're in a slippery airplane (Mooney, Bonanza, Cirrus) exceeding Vne ain't easy -- I'm sure most pilots would be uncomfortable with the required descent angle.
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I think even in a Cirrus, a 7,000 FPM Vne descent would be rather uncomfortable! :eek:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I think even in a Cirrus, a 7,000 FPM Vne descent would be rather uncomfortable! :eek:
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Perhaps, but not nearly as uncomfortable as in a 172.:D Seriously, at idle power and a lot of bank angle, that Cirrus will fall like the proverbial rock at Vne without an extraordinarly steep pitch attitude. To get 7000 ft/min in that 172, you'd have to be pointed pretty near straight down -- that's 70 knots vertical velocity!
 
Jaybird180 said:
You have an opportunity now to help me (and others reading) "shift fire" so to speak before this area of unpreparedness is revealed.

I always say, stuff happens to those unprepared and rarely to those prepared, ready and able.
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I really need to post my PFOA story over here some day
 
dmccormack said:
OK -- unless you're in a slippery airplane (Mooney, Bonanza, Cirrus) exceeding Vne ain't easy -- I'm sure most pilots would be uncomfortable with the required descent angle.
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Not as uncomfortable as burning alive.

Last time I practiced an anvil descent, I pulled power, banked into a 45+ degree bank to bleed speed, pulled full flaps then transitioned to a forward slip at the top of the white arc.

Never even close to VNE and the ground got very big very fast. VSI was pegged. Couldn't tell you what actual FPM was.
 
Doggtyred said:
Not as uncomfortable as burning alive.

Last time I practiced an anvil descent, I pulled power, banked into a 45+ degree bank to bleed speed, pulled full flaps then transitioned to a forward slip at the top of the white arc.

Never even close to VNE and the ground got very big very fast. VSI was pegged. Couldn't tell you what actual FPM was.
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.... and that is a fun maneuver -- and makes sense if you're right over an airport or other nice touchdown point.

Otherwise you're gliding in some direction. Dropping the nose to reach Vne is not a "normal" maneuver for most, and we humans tend to fall back on habit or training under stress.

If you haven't trained a response, it's highly unlikely you'll respond that way with the airplane on fire.
 
So how do you find the max decent configuration of an airplane? The POH provides the max climb data only.
 
Jaybird180 said:
So how do you find the max decent configuration of an airplane? The POH provides the max climb data only.
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Extrapolation.

Quenching the fire with air requires the fastest speed possible without breaking the Airplane -- some speed just under Vne.

Getting on the ground as quickly as possible requires a high vertical descent rate, best achieved with lots of drag and lots of bank at a slow -- yet controllable -- forward air speed.
 
Jaybird180 said:
So how do you find the max decent configuration of an airplane? The POH provides the max climb data only.
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You look in the POH/AFM for a recommended emergency descent configuration. Some aircraft have it. For most that don't, you use a general technique described by many here of dropping the gear and possibly flaps (although I haven't seen any instructor recommend using flaps for e-descent in a twin) and essentially knife-edging it in a slip toward the ground.
 
Jaybird180 said:
So how do you find the max decent configuration of an airplane? The POH provides the max climb data only.
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Check the Emergency Procedures section of the POH for "Emergency Descent" -- that's where we got the Vne descent procedure for the Cirrus.
 
Let's say it's not provided in the POH and I want to determine this information, the variations and permutations are many between high drag configuration to a dive bomber style....I find it interesting that high drag is being cited as the general technique, but it is what it is, I guess.
 
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