The risk of traveling in a light aircraft

Everything that moves can pose a hazard. To those outside the moving thing and to those inside of it. Cars get off the road, hit another car or hit a static object. And so do airplanes. An aircraft doesn’t get off the road but it may get out of control and eventually crash unless the pilot is not able to recover to a stable flight attitude.

Unlike many car accidents crashes in aviation are usually fatal. Cars are built to withstand some major forces while airplanes have to be relatively light and every weight that can be spared does count. On the other hand it’s not very common to touch another object - or the ground - with an aircraft while for cars that happens quite frequently. A saying is that the most dangerous part of flying is the drive to the airport.

But please don’t ask me for statistics. There are many out there and you will find them easily by using the search engines available.

Safety systems for light aircraft

When I was flying gliders I used to wear a parachute on my back. Flying a glider poses a much greater risk of colliding with another glider, because many of them are trying to gain altitude in the very same stream of rising air. In the event of a collision one would unlock the canopy, it would flow away and then one would jump out. If the parachute is of the automatic type, it would be pulled open by a string attached to the glider.

On light aircraft with an engine the practice of wearing a parachute is not very common. The main reason is that it is difficult to leave the aircraft. Some aircraft only have one door and even with two doors it may be very difficult to press them open against the force of the wind.

Use a big parachute for the whole aircraft

Based on developments for very light aircraft the manufacturer Cirrus integrated a system designed by Ballistic Recovery Systems into their line of single engine piston aircraft.

In the case of trouble and when a regular landing at an airfield seems impossible, the pilot will activate a parachute system. A rocket pulls out the parachute and eventually the whole aircraft body will be lowered to the ground. The forces of the impact will be absorbed by the landing gear and the seats to prevent injuries to the pilot and passengers.

The aircraft will suffer severe damage but the promise is that the humans will not. This seems to be a similar approach as the one taken by the automotive industry. In a car accident the impact forces are supposed to be absorbed by certain elements of the car’s body. The car will be a wreck, but everyone walks away from the accident alive.

Accidents with Cirrus aircraft with the CAPS systems (the name Cirrus uses for the system supplied by BRS) leave the aircraft partially destroyed. However, I have learned that a lot of the damage can be repaired and the aircraft be flown again.