Shades of the Apollo program – Cirrus Aircraft is going to enter the VLJ (Very Light Jet) market with an innovative design and its signature safety feature – a parachute recovery system.
Imagine flying a jet aircraft at 300 knots and 25,000 feet and – suddenly – something goes wrong and you can no longer control the descent of the aircraft. Well, with the Cirrus jet, known as “the jet”, Cirrus hopes to provide the answer: a parachute recovery system. Just pop the chute and drift down to terra firma. Now this system is nothing new; as I said earlier, it was used for the recovery of manned space capsules and worked quite well. However, it did not appear to help Cory Lidell and his instructor when their Cirrus struck a high rise in New York City.
The bigger issue is what is going to happen to the U.S. airspace system as all of these new VLJ’s come on line? Many non-professional pilots have ordered these aircraft, and expect to fly them. And a lot of these non-pros are older, because it takes a bit of time to acquire the $ 1,000,000 + it takes to buy one of these beauties, let alone afford the jet fuel and other costs associated with operating a jet aircraft. And jets are normally only efficient at the higher altitudes – 35,000 to 45,000 feet. Guess who flies at these altitudes? Your right, we do on airliners or biz jets flown by professional pilots. The question is, how is all this predicted traffic going to work together?
There are other unique challenges for these owner/pilots operating aircraft at these altitudes. A rapid decompression can cause loss of consciousness within seconds, so specialized training on how to descend the aircraft quickly is required, as well as how to don an oxygen mask quickly, deal with passengers in panic and save the aircraft they have invested a lot of money in! In addition, these aircraft are slower than airliners. For example the Eclipse 500 very light jet, which just won certification from the FAA, flies at 370 knots, or about 425 miles per hour. Compare this to a Boeing 767 which operates at about 530 miles per hour. So, the airliners will have to pass all of these very light jets as they traverse the jet airways. Other problems will arise if these vlj’s go into the major airports because the approach speeds of the commercial airliners will be much higher than that for the vlj’s.
In the end, however, it will all have to work out. Cessna is bringing out the Mustang, Eclipse the 500, Adam aircraft the A 700 and more. So, it will be interesting to see how all of this works out. In the meantime keep your wings straight and level.
“Crusty Captain”
