If we can not fly then how can we get to servise center. For me 1.5 airtime into Santa Monica. I do not want it worked on were I am at. I asume the headliner will have to come out BUMMER . I am not worried but some people have mentioned the legal aspects. That is my concern. Also I do want to say I have 81 hours on my 20 Made during the new run of 20 I have not had any of the problems that were mentioned on early models And I know from the post that many have had issues from the start. I have talked by mail to some others made since and deliverd after Augest and they have not mentioned any problems to me. I think the quality is much beter now. I just thought I would try to post something I know of that is positive at least for me. I also really like my SR20. I do think this is going to hurt the sales for a while. It might even hold off a price increse. From Don # 1150
Don, I’m in the same situation - no local service center. However, I think it would be extremely risky (and I don’t know about legal) to fly the airplane anywhere before the SB is complied with. If that one-in-a-million event happens and you pull the 'chute handle, and nothing happens, it would be catastrophic for you (especially) and all other Cirrus owners in general. So, I won’t be flying mine until the situation is resolved. Besides, we don’t know the extent of the repair yet. If the estimate in the Cirrus letter is accurate (e.g. a 15 minute repair) then I doubt the headliner will have to come out.
Also, I agree with your comments on the good quality of the Cirrus airplanes. I took delivery of my SR20 in January and have had no serious complaints about the quality, etc. It’s a great airplane! (MFD? MFD? We don’t need no stinkin’ MFD!)
Konrad
In reply to:
I asume the headliner will have to come out BUMMER.
Don,
It’s my understanding that the clamp that must be added is inserted behind the baggage compartment through the CAPS access panel. The headliner does not need to come out.
Mike.
If your concern is about the FAA, you should contact your FSDO and see if they would require a ferry permit. I suspect the advice already given on this board would be correct, that since this is a SA not an AD that legal airworthiness is not at issue.
If your concern is liability, then you should contact your insurance company and get their permission in advance of the flight.
Or you can decide as many other on this board have that as PIC you can make the call yourself.
-Curt
Hi Konrad,
A Service Advisory is a recommendation. It is not a requirement. After all, that’s why it’s called a Service Advisory.
You also have a one-in-several-million chance of being hit by a meteorite in flight. (http://www.branchmeteorites.com/MetStruck.htmlClick here for a list of meteorites that have hit man-made objects, and http://nyrockman.com/pages/peekskill-knapp.htmclick here for a photo of an unfortunate Chevy Malibu that took a direct hit.) Your insurance company wouldn’t pay in that case. But I wouldn’t worry about that, either.
Cheers,
Roger
Hi Roger,
Yes, I understand that it is only an advisory - and that’s why I am choosing to not fly until the issue is resolved. I hope you’ll make the same choice but that is, of course, up to you. Can you really believe it wouldn’t harm GA in general, and Cirrus owners in particular, if there were an “incident” and the 'chute didn’t deploy? I would rather not fly for a few days than take the risk. Yes, the risk is small, but the consequences are large.
Konrad
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you 
Yes, I understand that it is only an advisory - and that’s why I am choosing to not fly until the issue is resolved. I hope you’ll make the same choice but that is, of course, up to you. Can you really believe it wouldn’t harm GA in general, and Cirrus owners in particular, if there were an “incident” and the 'chute didn’t deploy? I would rather not fly for a few days than take the risk. Yes, the risk is small, but the consequences are large.
Konrad
Konrad,
I’m afraid I still don’t follow this line of reasoning. I can certainly understand the potential damages that a particular pilot might receive as a result of this SA. (i.e. if the pilot goes flying and something really bad happens, they might not have the chute to rely on.) So, I could certainly understand if any given pilot would choose not to fly given the issuance of the SA, after weighing his or her own personal risk aversion factors.
However, I cannot see how it would “harm GA in general and Cirrus owners in particular” if there was an incident and the chute didn’t deploy. I suppose it MIGHT contribute to higher insurance rates (but keep in mind that even if the chute DID deploy, the insurance company would be facing a total loss of the airframe, so I don’t see how insurance would be impacted any more than any other major accident).
Would it reduce value of the Cirrus planes? I don’t see how – the post-crash argument would be “well, that guy took off knowing that the chute might not work, so he shouldn’t have depended on it to get him out of a bind”. I don’t see how that would affect the value of the remaining Cirrus fleet, after their chutes are all fixed.
Would it harm GA if people on the ground or in the plane got killed? I guess it might – but how would it harm GA any more than any other crash, in any GA airplane, on any other day?
I certainly would never criticize a pilot who chose to ground his or her Cirrus during this time – that is their perrogative and is definitely the safer of the two choices.
However, my view is that even the “more unsafe” of the two choices (flying the plane as-is) could certainly be chosen without undue risk. (In other words, to me it doesn’t seem any “more unsafe” than choosing to fly a C172 or any other plane without a parachute. In fact, later in the day after flying my SR20 on Saturday, I was a passenger in a friend’s Piper Arrow. I don’t see how I was more safe in the Arrow than in the SR20.)
Again, this is just my $0.02 on the issue. I posted a similar statement on the members board over the weekend and apologize for repeating myself, but I really would like to hear the other side of this argument to see if there’s some risk I’m not considering. I guess I am just really surprised by how dangerous people seem to think these planes are without chutes!
Steve
P.S. As of this writing, to the best of my knowledge the total “official” notification of this issue has been just a SA from Cirrus. Obviously, if this happens to turn into an AD, then I would of course comply with the AD!
Can you really believe it wouldn’t harm GA in general, and Cirrus owners in particular, if there were an “incident” and the 'chute didn’t deploy?
Are you sure it didn’t already happen? Since this recalls apparently applies to every Cirrus, are we sure that the fatalities western mountains (I forgot where) wasn’t a failed deployment?
Hello Steve!
Michael Hanyecz here, part owner of the only SR22 that got stuck enroute from DLH to VNY. Even though CIRRUS has issued ONLY an Owner Service Advisory, the CAPS is part of the airplane’s FAA certicate that was issued for these planes. It is very much part of the life safety feature of the plane. While the Advisory’s language was a “recommendation”, CIRRUS themselves have grounded all their planes Friday morning in Duluth. No flights to the paint shop, nor any test flights. My only dissatisfaction with this entire issue is, that had CIRRUS told us about this problem while we were in Duluth to accept the plane, we could have left our plane there at the factory. Since they choose not to tell us, until we were far away from there, we got stuck. We were not given the choice, like everyone else, to fly or not to fly, since we have not been signed off by the CIRRUS pilot, we don’t have factory training, therefore we have no insurance coverage. The bottom line is, we don’t have our money, and we don’t have our plane. The choice of flying or grounding was not given to us, like it has been given to everybody else. And this totally sucks!
Hi Michael,
Yes, I agree that at this point your choices are a lot more limited than most owners’ are! I felt pretty bad when I first heard about your situation - doesn’t sound like much fun to be stuck halfway across the country with a brand-new plane that can’t be flown. [:(]
Steve
Since this recall apparently applies to every Cirrus, are we sure that the fatalities western mountains (I forgot where) wasn’t a failed deployment?
Art,
The http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief.asp?ev_id=20010423X00798&key=1NTSB report (NTSB Identification: LAX01FA145) on the April 10, 2001 crash of SR20 N116CD is still preliminary, so they have yet to assign a probable cause or to draw any conclusions. But sad to say, it has all the earmarks of a CFIT accident.
Cheers,
Roger
We also can’t be sure that it wasn’t struck by the aforementioned meteor, nor that the pilot wasn’t briefly abducted by aliens. This is a specious argument.
The preliminary report states that the pilot was scud running in low visibility and freezing rain conditions in mountainous terrain. With that level of stupidity, the chute wouldn’t be of much help in any case.
I believe this was a case of VFR into night IMC in mountainous terrain (CFIT).
Art: From what I have read about the Cirrus fatalities in the western mountains, there was no evidence that chute deployment had been attempted. If there had been an attempted deployment, the handle would be in the “pulled” position, which I believe it was not.
I think that accident was a circumstance of attempted VFR into IMC with CFIT. With the ARNAV terrain display on board and with the Garmins providing a flight plan on airways there was certainly plenty on board to navigate by. As memory serves, that accident was off airways, night, IMC and a VFR pilot. I don’t think the chute had any thing to do with it.