Kevin,

I don’t know if you’ve seen some prior posts on this subject, but a proven flight procedure that works – for some - has been published. The issue seems to be that those that have sadly not survived a canopy open event after making a simple mistake - just like gear up landings and many other similar examples of pilot (think “human”) error may be didn’t know about this procedure, or were just not able for other reasons to implement that procedure. Page 41 of Valin’s paper also refers to a suggested procedure.

Specifically wrt the flight procedure, we just need to make sure as many Legacy pilots get to know what works if they end up with the canopy open in flight. I’ve published below extract from my POH on the LML Forum before and elsewhere, and for what its worth, here it is again – it is based on what others have said worked for them.  But – the procedure is just a part of the solution as it would appear that it does not alone reduce the risk of a fatal canopy open event to accepted GA targets.

But surely as a community, we need to make sure as many builders, owners and operators of Legacys are at least informed of what can happen and are at least aware of the raft of measures (beyond an emergency flight procedure) that are available to reduce the risk to pilots and their passengers.  Think of it as a duty of care, and not a process of being concerned with lesser of consequences.

The paper that Valin has put together is a fantastic initiative and contains so much knowledge and real experience of an issue that has caused somewhere around 10% of Legacy fatal events. Probably impossible to measure, but the paper's publication and circulation will I expect save many lives. How can one argue with that outcome?

As an aside, whilst work on a secondary latch (or fail safe mechanism) continues, I should say that one that one of the design criteria is that such a latch must not unduly hinder emergency egress by occupants or emergency external opening of a canopy by persons not likely to be familiar with the mechanism. A clever solution has to be out there somewhere…… and may be a solution that goes a very long way to achieving the target exists in the form of Valin’s solution which is described in his paper – its not a secondary / safety latch, but it stops the canopy from closing if the internal canopy handle is not in the closed position – and a canopy in that partly open position would surely be very hard to miss?