Summary
A small plane crash in Fullerton, California, killed two people onboard and injured 19 warehouse workers, 11 of whom were hospitalized.
The single-engine Van’s Aircraft RV-10, a kit-built plane, took off from Fullerton Municipal Airport, reached 900 feet, and requested an emergency return before crashing short of the runway into a furniture warehouse, causing a large fire.
The cause of the crash remains under investigation, with authorities examining why the pilot attempted to return.
Significant damage to the warehouse was reported.
They were turning around to try an emergency landing. Safe to assume they discovered the issue well above 900 feet. Also the cirrus parachutes worked at 400 AGL in level flight and 900 in a spin. (Iirc, this more or less true for the kit plane or far103 versions.)
It’s possible ( though I’m not gonna bother checking) that they could have instead gotten lined up in a field and had a gentle albeit embarrassing landing without ever getting that low.
As to if they would have tried that or not… well. That’s a different story and I don’t really want to game it out.
As for retrofitting- yep. It is ridiculously expensive to do that. But in new aircraft… not as much. (Let’s be honest, most kit builds are improvised or adapted anyhow, it’s not that much more onerous to add a requirement for new aircraft, and eventually, we’ll get there.