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>The insurance companies apparently want pilots to pull the CAPS rather than try to dead stick it. Well of course they do. CAPS does a pretty good job putting
by dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>The insurance companies apparently want pilots to pull the CAPS rather than try to dead stick it.
Well of course they do.
CAPS does a pretty good job putting an upper bound on the worst case result. They don't care if you screw your plane up because that's a known cost and you'll pay it back through premiums if you keep flying.
Dead sticking it has a very good chance of being no more expensive than a normal landing if you find a runway and not all that expensive if you find a good field or empty highway (i.e. a big towing bill) so of course most pilots would prefer to dead stick. But this comes with a small chance of you crashing into a daycare and maxing out your policy. The insurers do not want this.
Most decent pilots with good situational will be able to make the correct call between CAPs and dead sticking it. They're telling you to go CAPS all the time because they have to deal with idiot pilots too. It's the same reason every drivers ed program emphasizes brakes, brakes, brakes, despite the steering wheel being a far better way to avoid many problems. They don't trust you to make the call.
- briandear 7y agoOne of my friends is a Cirrus platinum instructor, including being type rated for the Vision Jet and even he had a CAPS pull as his first choice versus landing off airport. They call it dead sticking for a reason.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoWas it his plane or a company plane? There's a big difference between taking on a little extra risk for your money vs someone else's money.
- whyaduck 7y agoWhat's "a little extra risk"? A 5% chance you'll die? 1%? 0.1%? Compared to what? Those are actually very large risks when the cost is your life. When the survival rate of using CAPS is an order of magnitude (or more) safer? Use the chute. Not to mention how bad a decision it would be to dead stick if there are passengers on board.
- guidoism 7y agoIf I had something like Xavion to help with the approach I would probably choose the dead stick approach but really, how often have any of us ever really dead sticked it? I haven't. We pull the power to idle, but that's not the same as a propeller windmilling. That propeller is a huge brake and we aren't used to it. I for one prefer five nines of survival probability to something much smaller. What are the dead stick survival stats?
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoAnecdotal story: I know of a skydive place that does or at least used to regularly (like once or twice a week) dead stick it in a C182 because they would fly with the bare minimum of fuel (when you're flying up and down all day even a little extra weight costs a lot of money).