Art, if you know any other facts, please inform us.
No. I think 3 failures out of 4 trys says it all.
I completely admit that I don’t know if there is something fundamentally wrong with the chute, or if this is just another example of an airplane needing to be fixed “in the field.” This certainly puts some big holes in the theory that having the government certify anything is worth a dime (and yet it costs several million). However, I do feel that there is a certain psychology of the chute that is dangerous, and I believe Cirrus is to blame for some of this. If you read their website, there is the following quote:
“The CAPS is designed to be used when the pilot no longer has control of the airplane, or has control but no place to land. This system can be activated when a serious or possibly fatal situation has developed from which recovery is impossible using normal piloting techniques… This type of system clearly improves the safety level of an airplane in catastrophic situations. With CAPS and other safety features as standard equipment, the SR20 will redefine the standard for general aviation safety.”
This is a bit too much hype for an airplane manufacturer, and I think that they have sold this airplane as fundamentally different in terms of safety, when in reality it still requires the same level of skill as any other high performance light airplane. The fact that people are buying this thing who have less than 100-200 hours I believe proves my point. Who the hell would buy a C210 as their first airplane? Yet Cirrus is duping people into thinking the SR-22 is a good first airplane to buy for low time (or even new) pilots, and the bloody thing has 300 HP and cruises at 200 MPH. That’s fricking insane. Remember the “V-tail Doctor Killer?”
Part of the problem with my argument, however, is that most (all?) of the people here are here because they are passionate about aviation and like to talk about it. You are all exactly the kinds of people I’m NOT talking about. I agree that when used in the right mindset, the chute is only a benefit. Hell, even if it worked half the time, it would still be better than nothing for situations like structural failure or pilot incapacitation, etc. The problem is that I imagine there are a lot of Cirrus pilots who don’t really even like flying all that much, they just like getting somewhere fast in their own plane. There are a lot of people who didn’t consider flying their own plane until the Cirrus came along, and those are the people who are going to make Cirrus look like an incredibly unsafe airplane (and believe me, at the present rate it will).
This explains why so many of us admired Cirus’s open response to the parachute issue - they had to expect that some people would twist the information they published. Is your point factual - yes. Is it a reasonable interpretation of the information - not in my opinion.
Art, three out of four failures doesn’t say it all, which is why there was so much detail communicated about the tests.
Now, Art, if you truly believed that all Cirri should be grounded, you wouldn’t let your Cirrus leave the ground…
You are right. If safety were my primary concern I would not be flying the plane. In any case grounding is a legal issue not necessarily a safety issue. If the stall warning is not working the plane is not airworthy, even though most of the time it works I canÂ’t hear it. I certainly don’t feel guilty about flying another Cirrus pilot who presumably understands and accepts the risks associated with the plane, but I have not taken any “civilians” who rely on my judgement for their safety.
We have grounded the plane, except for ferry flights to the service center, until the roll trim/autopilot problem is corrected.
If safety were my primary concern I would not be flying the plane.
If safety isn’t your primary concern, you shouldn’t be flying any airplane!
If safety isn’t your primary concern, you shouldn’t be flying any airplane!
Actually, I think it’s more fair to say that if safety is your primary concern, you shouldn’t be flying any GA airplane!
Birge,
I have performed many different stall series in my SR22 and have not noticed any tendency to spin. The stall itself is as docile as in a Cessna.
Remember that the Cirrus is certified to much more demanding - read “expensive” - standards than the Cessna 182 and most other GA aircraft flying. My understanding is that financial consideration dictated use of the chute for the FAA’s spin certification rather than any intrinsic spin tendency in the aircraft design.
Consider the following anecdote: A CFI-I friend of mine was giving SR22 transition training and the student didn’t hold sufficient right rudder during the departure stall sequence (apparently, he was not used to the high torque of the 310 HP engine). The plane entered a spin and the instructor immediately recovered the aircraft using the conventional technique. No big deal, in the instructor’s opinion. Although only one data point, this supports my understanding that the SR20/22 airframe is not particularly spin-prone.
I never rely on the parachute in making my flight planning decisions. However, I fail to see how I or my passengers would be safer without it.
Best regards,
George
N747SJ
In reply to:
The fact that there has already been a death due to a spin in a Cirrus put into serious question the safety features of the airplane. I guarantee you that the crash in NY would not have happened if the owners had purchased a 182.
Your use of the word fact is indefensible. As was suggested before, since you obviously know exactly what happened in New York you should contact the NTSB immediately and open a 900 psychic hotline.
Dirge…er, Birge; I think at this point it’s extremely presumptuous to assume the New York Cirrus was in a flat spin. “Anecdotal evidence” has proven to be be very unreliable, not just in aircraft incidents, but in most instances relating to the sensational. As I recall the witness referred to himself as an airplane “buff.” I don’t recall that he was even a pilot. Let’s wait until we hear from the experts. If the occupants were “too freaked out” to simply pull a handle, then it’s quite a stretch to me that they would have been able to go through the traditional spin recovery in a 182. Frankly, should I ever enter a spin in my Cirrus, my first response will be to employ the traditional technique first, and then the chute as a last resort.
It’s a stretch to say that the chute is more complex than an airbag. It is certainly more complex to deploy (because you actually have to do something) but the accelerometers and microprocessors and whatever else that’s in an airbag system are a whole lot more complex than the simple mechanicals in the chute.Failures in little-used systems are the dirty little secret of engineering, unfortunately. The chute is no different in this respect. There were all kinds of problems with airbags, airliner inflatable slides, civil emergency systems, and so forth, including injury and death. I agree that more testing should have been done, and I would guess that economic realities brought the testing to an end once the FAA signed off on the system. I suspect that there will be more testing in the wake of the Kentucky incident.“all of the anectodal evidence” consists of one self-described “aviation enthusiast” saying that the plane was in an inverted flat spin–and he was also quoted as saying that the plane was “spiralling straight for the ground.” While in fact the plane may have been in a spin, this is hardly authoritative. From there you move to “the fact that there has already been a death due to a spin” which is simply not supportable at this time. I’m also quite interested in how you can guarantee that the crash wouldn’t have happened in a 182 (an aircraft that has a history of crashing as well, for what that’s worth.) From there you assert that the aircraft is easy to spin, a statement for which there is no supporting evidence.I’ve seen a number of articles about upset training that say that most pilots, when faced with seriously unusual attitudes, fail to do the right thing, and end up exacerbating the problem. How the pilots managed to end up in an unusual attitude is unknown, but once there, all bets are off. It may be that the plane is in fact hard to spin, but that they managed to do so anyhow. As you state, if the plane is flown within limits it should be nearly impossible to get into a flat spin. It may not have been in a spin, and it may not have been flown within limits.Short of sensors that detect the unusual attitude and fire the pyros (like the ones that drive the roll bars and belt cinchers in my Volvo convertible) it can’t get a whole lot easier to use the chute–reach up and pull. Whether the average pilot will be able to do this (or any other concious action, particularly one that hasn’t been repeatedly trained for) while wildly disoriented is in some doubt, of course.I think what lies at the heart of this discussion is the role of the chute. If you view it as an option that might save your butt when you’ve run out of other options, then the fact that it is less than perfect (even if it always deploys successfully) should be acceptable. This is the reality of all of the safety systems with which we surround ourselves (airbags are a good example.) If there is an expectation that it will save your life when things have hit the fan, then the system will be unacceptable–if you make a habit of crashing your car into solid objects, sooner or later the airbag will misfire and you’ll be unhappy. This argument is weakened, of course, by the spin certification issue–IMHO Cirrus should go out and do the spin certification (which is pretty minimal for part 23 normal category airplanes) to eliminate the ambiguity.For what it’s worth, the test pilots have all said that the plane is both difficult to spin and easy to recover using standard techniques. The spin certification would help people feel better about this.
The fact that there has already been a death due to a spin in a Cirrus put into serious question the safety features of the airplane. I guarantee you that the crash in NY would not have happened if the owners had purchased a 182.
Here’s a list of some recent stall-spin accidents in Cessna 182 aircraft, with links to the NTSB reports. Apparently the pilots failed to read your guarantee.
http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief.asp?ev_id=20001207X02875&key=1January 14, 1995
http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief.asp?ev_id=20001208X08921&key=1September 1, 1997
http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief.asp?ev_id=20001212X19754&key=1September 18, 1999
http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief.asp?ev_id=20011226X02439&key=1December 5, 2001
Consider the following anecdote: A CFI-I friend of mine was giving SR22 transition training and the student didn’t hold sufficient right rudder during the departure stall sequence (apparently, he was not used to the high torque of the 310 HP engine). The plane entered a spin and the instructor immediately recovered the aircraft using the conventional technique. No big deal, in the instructor’s opinion. Although only one data point, this supports my understanding that the SR20/22 airframe is not particularly spin-prone.
While I absolutely believe that you aren’t the kind of person who would let the parachute cloud your judgement, your argument above about the Cirrus being typical in it’s spin characteristics is actually more to my point than yours.
In any Cessna but a 152, you would REALLY have to try to get a spin to occur in a power on stall. You could never do it just by being lazy on the coordination. And if you did succeed at provoking a spin, it wouldn’t be more than incipient (or maybe a turn or so) unless you intentionally held it there with full pro-spin inputs.
The fact that the Cirrus will enter a spin during a power on stall with “not enough right rudder” suggests that it’s quite a major misnomer to consider it spin-resistant. For an aircraft not even certified for intentional spins, that’s pretty bad.
I would consider power on stalls a reasonable training excersize, and yet clearly there is a significant risk of entering a spin while doing them in the Cirrus. Given that the only “official” means of recovery from a spin involves rolling the dice on the chute and destoying the airplane, I think it’s fair to consider it an issue.
Your use of the word fact is indefensible. As was suggested before, since you obviously know exactly what happened in New York you should contact the NTSB immediately and open a 900 psychic hotline.
Gordon:
Are you suggesting I wait until the government provides an official report before I talk about anything in life? Granted, I should’ve used to word “probable” before “fact,” but after reading every article I could find on the crash, it seems pretty clear that the airplane came down in a spin. Maybe it wasn’t flat, maybe it was, but a spin is something that quite easily identified by an observer with aviation experience, which is exactly what was reported.
At any rate, I’m not sure I’m right, but your posts haven’t exactly been helpful.
“Anecdotal evidence” has proven to be be very unreliable, not just in aircraft incidents, but in most instances relating to the sensational. As I recall the witness referred to himself as an airplane “buff.” I don’t recall that he was even a pilot. Let’s wait until we hear from the experts. If the occupants were “too freaked out” to simply pull a handle, then it’s quite a stretch to me that they would have been able to go through the traditional spin recovery in a 182. Frankly, should I ever enter a spin in my Cirrus, my first response will be to employ the traditional technique first, and then the chute as a last resort.
I agree that I shouldn’t have stated the spin occurred as a fact, though I don’t think that means we can’t discuss it as a likely possibility. But, you are right on that.
However, my point about the 182 was that it most likely wouldn’t have entered the spin (assuming that’s what it was) to begin with. You probably can’t even spin a 182 even if you try, and you almost certainly won’t get into a developed one by accident. With two people in front, I’m almost certain you couldn’t do it by accident.
In reply to:
Granted, I should’ve used to word “probable” before “fact,” but after reading every article I could find on the crash, it seems pretty clear that the airplane came down in a spin.
Ah - I see. It is not you who is the psychic accident investigator but rather it is the press who have the magic powers. I see you have equated the quantity of press coverage with the validity of your presumptuous “fact.” I had forgotten how dead-on accurate the press always is when reporting on general aviation. Thank you for reminding me.
Oh, and I see you have transformed the observer who stated he was an “aviation enthusiast” into an “observer with aviation experience.” Enthusiasm = experience in birge-land.
It is one thing to form an opinion based on sketchy data. It is another thing to then try to transform your opinion into “facts” and then spew.
In any Cessna but a 152, you would REALLY have to try to get a spin to occur in a power on stall. You could never do it just by being lazy on the coordination. And if you did succeed at provoking a spin, it wouldn’t be more than incipient (or maybe a turn or so) unless you intentionally held it there with full pro-spin inputs.
Birge,
I guess I wasn’t clear enough in my last post: The instructor recovered IMMEDIATELY. He certainly did not wait for a spin to fully develop. The wing dropped and it appeared to be a spin entry, in his opinion, so he recovered the airplane. Before the stall, the instructor saw the pilot messing up with the rudder and let him suffer the consequence - spin entry - before saving the day. Pretty standard instructional work. Finally, this is second-hand information; I wasn’t there so I probably shouldn’t comment further.
The SR22 is certainly NOT a Cessna 152; neither is a Bonanza. You can spin all of them and I imagine that it is easier to spin a high performance aircraft during a stall at full power than a trainer. You can kill yourself in any aircraft if you are not conservative in your planning and proficient for the mission being flown. Sometimes you can get killed anyway although, fortunately, this is rare. I think the Cirrus is the safest “feeling” plane I have personally flown. But I know that I can mess up fatally in a '22, a Lancair or a Skylane if I let my guard drop.
Let’s wait for the NTSB to report on the NY accident. In the meantime let’s all be careful, esp. when low time in type.
Best regards,
George
N747SJ
Any cessna will spin and given the right conditions do so quickly. I have given thousands of hours of dual in various types of cessna’s as well as other aircraft. Lack of rudder in a 172RG with a person in the back was the quickest I’ve seen one approach an inadvertant spin, the instructor was very quick to remedy the situation and prevent the spin (and before birge points it out, I know there was no one in the rear seat and that is not the point). The point is, we don’t know how the aircraft was loaded, to rather large flight bags in the back seat or baggage can change alot and in this case, a 172 can bite you as easily as any other aircraft. To compare a SR22 high performance aircraft to a 152 is comparing apples to oranges, try comparing it to something in it’s class like the Lancair or Bonanza. (I have seen a student almost spin a 152 from slow flight and this was a CFI candidate!) It can happen any time in any aircraft if one is not careful. To fault the aircraft in this case is way to premature.
On a side note, why do most posters give some info such as their name but birge won’t?
I would consider power on stalls a reasonable training excersize, and yet clearly there is a significant risk of entering a spin while doing them in the Cirrus.
BALDERDASH !!!
Birge - Exactly how many power on stalls have you done in an SR22. If the answer to that question is “None”, how the hell can you conclude that there is a “significant” risk in doing them. For that matter, if you don’t have any time in the airplane, how can you know anything about how it handles. Maybe your comments in this area would be more convincing if you spoke from some degree of experience in the plane.
Granted, applying full power in a 22 requires significant right rudder input whether in recovery from power on stalls or in any other situation. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that, particularly after you have any time in the plane. But to say that this characteristic creates a “significant risk” is clearly the remark of someone who either knows nothing about the airplane or who has a preconceived agenda. Which are you ??
Ah - I see. It is not you who is the psychic accident investigator but rather it is the press who have the magic powers. I see you have equated the quantity of press coverage with the validity of your presumptuous “fact.” I had forgotten how dead-on accurate the press always is when reporting on general aviation. Thank you for reminding me.
Oh, and I see you have transformed the observer who stated he was an “aviation buff” into an “observer with aviation experience.” Buff = experience in birge-land.
It is one thing to form an opinion based on sketchy data. It is another thing to then try to transform your opinion into “facts” and then spew.
Wow. In your picture you look like such a nice guy. Well, if it makes you feel better, the “official” report is quite often wrong, too, so lets just shelve the whole discussion until each one of us is around to see a crash first hand.
The witness described the airplane going inverted, and then coming down spinning. While people often mistake spiral dives for spins and vice versa, the fact that the airplane went inverted is consistent with a stall into a spin. Also consistent is another witness report that stated the aircraft’s engine sputtered. This might happen from either the initial low Gs from the stall and/or the subsequent unporting of the fuel from the spin. That wouldn’t happen in a spiral dive.
See the substance of the above? I might be wrong, but at least I tried to support my position instead of making nothing more than personal attacks, which quite honestly, really weren’t all that clever.
By the way, your subject would’ve been funnier if you’d kept the basic structure of my original subject but changed just the objects. Something like “lose the Birge, increase the intelligence” would’ve been better parody.
Gordon:
The term FEAR MONGER applies here – its no use. Like most such individuals, this person will not give in to logic or reason, regardless of his untenable position on the subject. You’re wasting your emotional energy trying… might as well yell at a mountain to move out of your way…