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Kids and Aerobatics

mulde35d

Well Known Member
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So after searching the threads I found one other post on this topic, but it was closed after some heated discussion.

My question is, how to safely do aerobatic flight with a kid who doesn't fit or wouldn't be able to effectively use a parachute. I am still building the 14, but fully expect to take my daughter on aerobatic flights when she is ready (currently 4 years old).

The regulations say this:
§91.307 Parachutes and parachuting.
(a) No pilot of a civil aircraft may allow a parachute that is available for emergency use to be carried in that aircraft unless it is an approved type and has been packed by a certificated and appropriately rated parachute rigger—
(1) Within the preceding 180 days, if its canopy, shrouds, and harness are composed exclusively of nylon, rayon, or other similar synthetic fiber or materials that are substantially resistant to damage from mold, mildew, or other fungi and other rotting agents propagated in a moist environment; or
(2) Within the preceding 60 days, if any part of the parachute is composed of silk, pongee, or other natural fiber or materials not specified in paragraph (a)(1) of this section.
(b) Except in an emergency, no pilot in command may allow, and no person may conduct, a parachute operation from an aircraft within the United States except in accordance with part 105 of this chapter.
(c) Unless each occupant of the aircraft is wearing an approved parachute, no pilot of a civil aircraft carrying any person (other than a crewmember) may execute any intentional maneuver that exceeds—
(1) A bank of 60 degrees relative to the horizon; or
(2) A nose-up or nose-down attitude of 30 degrees relative to the horizon.

(d) Paragraph (c) of this section does not apply to—
(1) Flight tests for pilot certification or rating; or
(2) Spins and other flight maneuvers required by the regulations for any certificate or rating when given by—
(i) A certificated flight instructor; or
(ii) An airline transport pilot instructing in accordance with §61.67 of this chapter.
(e) For the purposes of this section, approved parachute means—
(1) A parachute manufactured under a type certificate or a technical standard order (C-23 series); or
(2) A personnel-carrying military parachute identified by an NAF, AAF, or AN drawing number, an AAF order number, or any other military designation or specification number.

The Bold lettering is obviously what's important.

Now the thought moving forward for discussion is how to actually be safe.

Since parachutes won't likely fit her from 5-12 years old and she likely would be incapable of using it anyways, my thought was to have the adult pilot wear a parachute and for her to wear a harness with a D-ring and strap attaching her to the other person in the parachute.

The concept would be if the situation for a bailout were to occur (which is why the parachute is required for aerobatics, see Part 91.307 above), then we would unhook her seatbelt and bailout with her firmly attached to me and the parachute (the tighter the better of course). I know this is unlikely and would probably result in multiple injuries, but figure it's the best chance for true survival of both occupants in the unlikely bailout scenario.

While this doesn't meet Part 91.307 requirement, it is the only solution I can think of that would meet the intent of the FAR's and maintain a level of safety greater than just disregarding the parachute entirely. The only other solution I can think of is to not perform aerobatics until she fits in a parachute and knows how to use it effectively.

Does anyone else have any creative solutions or methods that may have worked in the past?
 
Airframe parachute?

How about fitting your -14 with an airframe parachute. Would that satisfy the FAR? It seems like an airframe BRS would be a safer alternative to abandoning the airplane and hoping it doesn?t hit an orphanage..
 
First suggestion - don't do aerobatics with kids that are too young to know how to use aparachute, or too small to fit into one.
Second suggestion - If you decide to do it anyway, don't post it here, or anywhere for that matter.

Just my suggestions, take it for what its worth.

A ballistic airframe parachute does not meet the requirement of FAR 91.307.
 
BRS

I hadn’t thought about the BRS. I don’t plan on installing one as it would add a lot of extra stuff and complexity to the build. It makes you wonder if it should satisfy the FAR. Possible that part 91.307 needs an update based on new technology.

Here is the sad part though, it would be easy to meet FAR 91.307 by putting a parachute on her. Pointless, but legal. I would like to find a way to be legal and have the layer of safety. Maybe we modify a small parachute harness to fit and then attach the Tether. Meets the letter of the law for a parachute and provides some additional level of safety being tethered to the adult wearing the parachute that would actually be deployed in a bailout (unlikely a situation as a bailout may be). I would also be interested in statistics where someone in an RV actually bailed out. I would bet it is a zero to single digit number.
 
Maybe a conversation with your local parachute rigger would prove fruitful. There are chutes for dogs and all sorts of other things. Hard to believe that there wouldn't be one for a kid. You could probably rig a tether.
 
Any attempt to exit a RV would only be after a catastrophic failure or loss of control. Exiting a out of control aircraft can be difficult solo and I suspect impossible with a tether arrangement.
George
 
I am a parachute rigger and this is such a bad idea on so many levels (and I'm sure not legal as well) that I wouldn't even know where to begin in trying to dissuade the OP. So instead, here's a true story that local Brown Field jumpers will recognize:

George and Scotty decided to do a "MR. Bill" jump in which two jumpers leave the airplane hanging tightly onto each other and then immediately deploy a parachute while sub-terminal. The way it works is that after deployment and then hanging onto each other for awhile, the second person drops away and then opens his own parachute and they both land individually to a bunch of yuks and laughter. Well what happened instead....is that the initial deployment was so violent that it essentially "blew up" the parachute and slammed the two together so hard, that it broke Scotty's femur. The largest bone in the body. Needless to say, the subsequent parachute opening (to replace the blown up one) and the parachute landing with a broken femur was no joy.

So I guess the moral of the story is that parachute "test jumping" should be left to the professionals. George and Scotty both had about 1000 jumps each and thought they knew what they were doing.
 
I have to say as a parent we are each responsible for our offspring, this is one stunt I would NOT do with a child!
There's an easy SAFE answer to this, take the child flying for sure but stay upright!
IF you had to bail out with your young child despite what chute arrangement you have would be extremely dangerous and the chances of a sucsesful exit and landing would be minuscule, is the risk really worth putting yr child thru such a frightening experience for a few aero's?

Please consider NOT doing this. I was in the EMS field for ten years and it broke my heart to see what parents put their children thru despite good intentions!
 
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Sorry to thread hijack but what have you and others found to be ?best practices? for carrying kids? I took my 6 month old up this weekend and her mother held her like she would in a commercial plane but it occurred to me that I didn?t research the topic firsthand. Any tips or suggestions? I have thick skin.
 
Sorry to thread hijack but what have you and others found to be ?best practices? for carrying kids? I took my 6 month old up this weekend and her mother held her like she would in a commercial plane but it occurred to me that I didn?t research the topic firsthand. Any tips or suggestions? I have thick skin.

Experiments done by auto safety folks demonstrated years ago that holding a baby or small child in your lap is useless...you can't physically hang on to them during even relatively low-speed crashes. The physics simply turns them into projectiles.

I would never let someone do this in my aircraft.
 
Sorry to thread hijack but what have you and others found to be ?best practices? for carrying kids? I took my 6 month old up this weekend and her mother held her like she would in a commercial plane but it occurred to me that I didn?t research the topic firsthand. Any tips or suggestions? I have thick skin.

No judgement here. Understand the risk, and accept it, or not. There is relatively little difference in deceleration considerations between an RV and an airliner when you have a lap child. There are other potential differences (ease of egress, for example). For a car-seat eligible child in a four seat airplane, I would put them in the back with an adult to care for them.
 
Ear muffs

Sorry to thread hijack but what have you and others found to be “best practices” for carrying kids? I took my 6 month old up this weekend and her mother held her like she would in a commercial plane but it occurred to me that I didn’t research the topic firsthand. Any tips or suggestions? I have thick skin.

Ear muffs and / or a very quiet cockpit. Apart from nose protection, infants have very tiny ear canals and may suffer great pain from altitude induced pressure changes if blocked. That's why infants cry so distressed on airliners.
 
As mentioned flying can be very painful for infants. They have no understanding of the concept of clearing their ears and tiny canals. This often leads to ear blocks.
G
 
Kids

Alright folks, I am not talking about doing full aerobatic routines to 6g?s with a small child on board. But I am also sure I am not the first one who wants to do a loop or roll with a child (just check YouTube). What I am advocating for is methods to do some basic low risk maneuvers while meeting the federal aviation regulation and actually adding some level of safety beyond wearing a chute and not knowing how to use it effectively. Based on the low number of actual ideas other than ?don?t?, I have to assume everyone who has done a roll with a kid simply did so in violation of the FAR?s and therefore is not responding.

I appreciate the example of the injuries from the skydivers as it drives home the point that exiting an aircraft under parachute is absolutely difficult and dangerous, but I bet if the jumpers were leaving a crippled aircraft and only suffered broken bones then they would be pretty happy to be alive when they landed. Nobody would advocate to try this type of jump intentionally, but to say a loop is too dangerous to do with a child on board is in my opinion the same as stating kids should never fly in experimental aircraft because it is ?too dangerous?.

Of note, part 91 of the FARs has some requirements for car seats. I am traveling and don?t have the number, but it is in there.
 
Based on the low number of actual ideas other than ?don?t?, I have to assume everyone who has done a roll with a kid simply did so in violation of the FAR?s and therefore is not responding.

Now you've got the core of it. Doing it is one thing - advertising it is another.
 
As for giving kids a ride, my son's first ride was at 12 weeks old, strapped to my wife's chest. He wore sunglasses and earmuffs designed for kids. I believe they were made by Peltor.

Later on, I added tiedown rings in the baggage compartment and snapped his baby bucket back there. Surounded by soft sided luggage, when we were traveling.

As he grew, he transitioned to a booster seat held in place by an airline seatbelt. That worked great until he out grew it and started kicking the back of my seat.

Now, he and I fly places on weekends and leave Mom at home.

The issue is dealing with insurance, not the FAA. If we had an accident, the insurance company would have only covered two of us and they might have found a reason not to cover that much.

You roll the dice and take your chances.
 
Regarding BRS systems and acro, they don't seem to be designed to be deployed when the aircraft is in unusual attitudes and/or at high speeds.

If you are doing acro and get out of control with the nose down and pop the chute, there is a good chance it will rip off. Also, it you have a structural failure and the plane is spinning at an high rate, there is a good chance it will get tangled up in the fuselage. (I know there is s video of a Rans that pulled its chute after a wing failure but it is both lighter and slower than an RV.)

For the Cirrus SR22 G6 the maximum parachute deployment speed is only 140 knots.
 
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Read all the replies. It is your plane and offspring. However I'd wait until they are 6 and just go flying for fun... no aerobatics... and gently work up to it. That is my take.

Have people done loops and rolls with passengers and no chute? Ahaaaa look at internet. I am sure you will find incriminating evidence. As a CFI I could do spins with students, sans chute for a rating. The only rating that requires spins is the CFI rating, 3 left, 3 right. However we had a C152 acrobat and chutes... so those were put on. Some pvt pilot students wanted to do spins. Of course while all decked out we did some basic aerobatic maneuvers...
 
In some cases you have to decide where you set the bar for safety. In others, the bar has been set for you, by the regulations.

There are lots of videos of aerobatics with children without parachutes. Keep in mind that not all countries require parachutes for occupants during aerobatics. Want to take your daughter up legally? Move to Canada. I'd say just come visit, but I expect the US regs would still apply to your US-registered aircraft while you were here.
 
Thanks for posting those links! I'd watched that first one over and over during the past couple years, because that laugh is addicting. It's nice to see that Dad has her into another airplane, and is all equipped now and she's still loving it.

My guess for the OP is that you can find a parachute maker that will have or will make one that's small enough for some pretty small body frames, and from a chute perspective you can get what you need. From an ability standpoint, I always found that kids can be taught to do most anything with some practice, so make a game of it and run some drills and get them comfortable with the whole concept. Flying in a side-by-side has its advantages when flying with young ones. Will the end result be that you can guarantee that a real bailout will go smoothly? No. But you can certainly push the odds towards the favorable side, and keep legal at the same time. I don't kid myself. I have 2 chutes and brief everyone who rides along for aerobatics on how to use them, but I can bet that there aren't many people, including myself, who are guaranteed to not only have what it takes to pull off a bailout mentally, but become skilled at it as well. We buy the chutes and wear them as a last line of defense, but for most of us it's still a crapshoot that we hope we never have to be tested on. My 2 cents on it is, practice solo, become proficient, wear chutes for legal reasons, but always keep plenty of altitude, especially with passengers, and be good at saving the plane. You're much more likely to be required to use your skills to recover from a botched maneuver than you are to bail out. I doubt that there is anyone on the list that will try to claim that bailing out is a simple option, in any circumstance. But, don't ignore that as an option, and always include it in your briefings.

I bought 2 chutes early on, and bought them big enough for myself to use, i.e. not the smaller chute size but the larger. I find that they fit fine for my daughter who's literally 140 lbs lighter than me. So if you buy the smaller chute model, and have it made for a very small person, you may end up happy with how it fits. Not only that, if you get a seat bottom type, they may be able to use it as a booster seat too.
 
No suggestions on the parachute rig for a child, but I'll just say this;

I've never departed an airplane (from controlled flight) doing an aileron roll...but I have unintentionally departed airplanes doing loops or over the top maneuvers.

Might factor that into your parachute thoughts...
 
It can be done

As some of you know, I fly a lot of aerobatics. My kids have also been doing acro with me for years, and it has been a very positive experience for them. My youngest son was 8-years old when he started flying aerobatics with me, and now he's talking about flying in aerobatic contests after he gets his PPL. We have "standard operating procedures" and full-up emergency procedures training for the children. I am not casual about any of our flying, especially aerobatics. When a child is ready to be signed off as an acro pax, then we go fly.

My humble opinion is that many here are over-thinking the subject. If your passenger a) fits properly in the parachute harness, b) is fully trained on how to use it, and c) can egress the airplane, then go fly. Get a smaller parachute for lightweight individuals with a crossover aerobatic harness. Tighten the straps all the way to the stops, and if it's too loose, then the passenger is too small to fly, period. This isn't rocket science folks. Feed the kid steak and potatoes until he/she fits the chute harness.

I should add d) the most important thing: first look in the mirror. Are you trained and proficient? Can you responsibly carry a passenger in aerobatic flight without causing unnecessary risk? The standard of excellence is much higher when carrying a young passenger.

Finally, there's aerobatics, and then there's passenger aerobatics. Loops should not be round, but rather cursive "L" shaped. Slow rolls should be docile and fun. G loads should be as low as possible. And the flight should be short. The idea is to have a positive experience where the passenger is still smiling in the base turn.
 
issues

WTF is everyone talking about in here...?.

? 91.303 Aerobatic flight.
No person may operate an aircraft in aerobatic flight -
(a) Over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement;
(b) Over an open air assembly of persons;
(c) Within the lateral boundaries of the surface areas of Class B, Class C, Class D, or Class E airspace designated for an airport;
(d) Within 4 nautical miles of the center line of any Federal airway;
(e) Below an altitude of 1,500 feet above the surface; or
(f) When flight visibility is less than 3 statute miles.
For the purposes of this section, aerobatic flight means an intentional maneuver involving an abrupt change in an aircraft's attitude, an abnormal attitude, or abnormal acceleration, not necessary for normal flight.
[Doc. No. 18834, 54 FR 34308, Aug. 18, 1989, as amended by Amdt. 91-227, 56 FR 65661, Dec. 17, 1991]

"Understanding and working within the LAW is way more fun than blindly following it."

Stay legal my friends.
 
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Mycool, sir, was there a question or statement in your post?

I can’t speak for the other contributors to this thread. But in my case, I fly in a waivered aerobatic box from surface to 5,000 AGL. When someone pastes FARs, I sense his presumption that a rule is being broken. In this case, nothing could be farther from true. Have a nice day and carry on. Respectfully (from a guy who may have flown CAS for you) — Gash
 
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Under FAR 91.303 parachutes are not required for aerobatics.
Skip forward a couple to .307 you’ll find it:

(c) Unless each occupant of the aircraft is wearing an approved parachute, no pilot of a civil aircraft carrying any person (other than a crewmember) may execute any intentional maneuver that exceeds--
(1) A bank of 60 degrees relative to the horizon; or
(2) A nose-up or nose-down attitude of 30 degrees relative to the horizon.
 
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Uhhh

Thanks, I missed that the original post was for a “passenger.”
As Gash puts it “Aeorbatics” and then “Passenger Aerobatics”.

BTW Gash, what do you mean you’ve “flown CAS for me?
 
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CAS

I'd venture a guess he assumed that since you served in the 75th you'd equate CAS to Close Air Support.
 
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Close Air Support (CAS) for the grunts. Lots of it. You never know, you might have been one of the bros down there.
 
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