> Do pilots of small aircraft consider this in practice?
No. Not unless it's required (doing aerobatics work requires it, which is rather more likely to overstress the aircraft than regular mostly straight and level flying).
Small airplanes just don't fall apart in flight (exceptions like the Piper wing spar in training duty are just that - exceptions, and typically lead to a lot of exception requirements). They only come apart if you've already screwed up a lot - usually lost control flying into a cloud without an instrument rating and ended up in a graveyard spiral (nose down, steep bank, you either hit the ground at speed or pull the wings off first, and then hit the ground at speed).
I know a lot of GA pilots. I know none who fly with parachutes.
Things like the Cirrus airframe chute are interesting, and have saved some people, but Cirrus seems to attract a large number of people who outfly their skill level and get themselves into a lot of trouble. Sometimes the parachute helps, but they shouldn't have been there in the first place.
General wisdom is that once the engine quits, the airframe is the insurance company's problem. However, an awful lot of the time, the pilot is able to perform a safe off-airport landing with minimal or no damage to the aircraft. You can safely land on roads, in fields, in random desert, etc, and walk away with a perfectly usable airplane. A typical single engine GA aircraft only lands at about 50mph. It really doesn't take much distance to get down and, if not stopped, at least slow enough that you don't really hurt yourself or the airframe if you go off the end of [whatever].
CAPS (the Cirrus parachute system) has a pretty impressive record. One of the ways Cirrus actually improved crash survivability for their aircraft was training pilots to start by assuming they're going to pull the chute. Might they be able to perform a successful engine-out landing? Yes. Might they be able to restart the engine? Also yes. But, by starting with the mindset "Plane failed, pull the chute" you don't fixate on these ideas past the point where the chute ceases to be available, so when that engine won't start, and you realise you can't find that long straight road you'd always imagined landing on, you still have enough altitude to pull the CAPS handle and live to make better choices another day.
On their Vision Jets they also have emergency autoland, which is a blessing under FAA conditions where realistically some elderly pilots are going to die up there, leaving anybody else in the plane to get down on their own. Is it possible to talk a zero experience lay person down in a single engine plane when their pilot buddy slumped over suddenly in level flight? I wouldn't bet money on them even operating the radio correctly. But the emergency autoland can put that plane back on the ground pretty reliably, maybe even in time for the pilot to receive medical attention if they're merely incapacitated not yet dead.
It amazes me how many pilots I see on here when the topic comes up. Is it because this site is just popular enough to have a mix of everyone or is there some true demographic overlap here?
I would assume there's a decent overlap between tech types/programmers/etc and pilots. They have the money for it (GA is not as expensive as most people think, but neither is it cheap), and they have the whole attention to detail/"The more gauges the better!" attitudes that tend to work well with flying.
There also seems to be a pretty good overlap between motorcycle riders and pilots. Find a middle aged man riding 10k+ miles/yr on a BMW or similar, and there's a very good chance he's a pilot too.
Both. A lot of people are on HN. There's also a big demographic overlap between pilots and HN readers. So, lots of pilots on HN. Source: pilot turned software engineer in San Francisco.
No. Not unless it's required (doing aerobatics work requires it, which is rather more likely to overstress the aircraft than regular mostly straight and level flying).
Small airplanes just don't fall apart in flight (exceptions like the Piper wing spar in training duty are just that - exceptions, and typically lead to a lot of exception requirements). They only come apart if you've already screwed up a lot - usually lost control flying into a cloud without an instrument rating and ended up in a graveyard spiral (nose down, steep bank, you either hit the ground at speed or pull the wings off first, and then hit the ground at speed).
I know a lot of GA pilots. I know none who fly with parachutes.
Things like the Cirrus airframe chute are interesting, and have saved some people, but Cirrus seems to attract a large number of people who outfly their skill level and get themselves into a lot of trouble. Sometimes the parachute helps, but they shouldn't have been there in the first place.
General wisdom is that once the engine quits, the airframe is the insurance company's problem. However, an awful lot of the time, the pilot is able to perform a safe off-airport landing with minimal or no damage to the aircraft. You can safely land on roads, in fields, in random desert, etc, and walk away with a perfectly usable airplane. A typical single engine GA aircraft only lands at about 50mph. It really doesn't take much distance to get down and, if not stopped, at least slow enough that you don't really hurt yourself or the airframe if you go off the end of [whatever].