What attracted me to the Cirrus initially was the comfort. Four grown men can sit comfortably in it. My family flies 9 hour days without complaining.
A friend bought a Columbia 400, but his kids couldn’t fit in the back seat. That’s a deal killer for me. My mechanic, a Cirrus guru, had a 400 in the shop and said it was built like a kit plane and not nearly as rugged as the Cirrus — his opinion.
I used to fly a Mooney Ovation. Awesome plane and a joy to fly. But when it came time to purchase, there just weren’t many out there. A comparable Bonanza was about $100,000 more expensive at the time. There were lots of Cirrus available at prices that worked for me.
But, for the flying I do — 200 hours per year, at night and IMC — if I didn’t have a chute I would want a twin. I’m glad I don’t have to pay the added cost for a twin and I think I get comparable/superior safety.
I sometimes envy the range and six seats of my neighbor’s A36, but he lost an engine and was fortunate to put it down on a West Texas highway. Try that at night or 200’ overcast. No thanks.
2,800 hours later I haven’t regretted my purchase.
No, its not stepping on toes. That would presume that those who disagree are simply thin skinned, rather than that they may have a well-reasoned basis for what they are asserting that may be worth considering.
It’s not stepping on toes, its more conflation of non-relevant information. Having thousands of hours doing something that didn’t involve landing on an unprepared surface after an engine failure doesn’t really say anything about one’s expertise in landing on an unprepared surface after an engine failure. I have thousands of hours of flight time and actually have made hundreds of landings on unprepared surfaces, but they were all in a helicopter. The only expertise that gives me in pontificating about the safety of an off-airport landing in a relatively high stall speed piston single is that I’m perhaps more aware of how different an LZ looks from 5’ than it does from 500’ and how much I’d be tricking myself if I thought I could really land in all those spots that I always thought looked good from the air without serious injury. But other than that, there are dozens of folks here with far fewer hours than me that have had the misfortune of experiencing in-flight engine failures and every one of them is far more of an expert on the topic than I am.
By the same token, like most high time pilots I’m a student of the mishap reports to learn everything I can without having to experience it. In order to do that, I don’t read a mishap report about a CFIT incident and come to the conclusion that the plane involved has too small of an elevator, for example, or read about an icing incident and determine the non-FIKI aircraft needed a bigger gas tank. You see, those conclusions conflate a result with something entirely unrelated.
Say one was to postulate that using a chute after an engine failure is dangerous because one has no control over where the plane ends up and it’s safer to choose whatever offsite landing zone one can? That’s certainly a reasonable hypothesis and easily tested at this point. Simply tally up the number of serious injuries or deaths when a pilot who was in a position to land off-airport after an engine failure and opted to use a chute instead and compare that to those who opted to land off-airport without a chute, normalize for hours or events, and the answer will be obvious. It in fact is obvious. Holding that clear answer, it’s baffling when why one would then decide to add in all the times an airplane with a chute suffered from CFIT or stalls/spins in the traffic pattern or flying into thunderstorms or any of the other many ways pilots have to kill themselves that have nothing to do with the presence or absence of a chute… in determining the very bounded and simple question of if it is safer to pull a chute or land off airport in event of an engine failure in a relatively high stall speed piston single?
So not toes being stepped on, just a little bafflement about the relevance of the information used to support the conclusions, that’s all.
I think the Cirrus is a great plane, and would be a great plane, perhaps not as great without a chute. But there are so many variable. Would I feel safer in flying over the Rockies at night in a Cirrus versus a Bonanza. Damn straight. 10/10. Would I feel safer flying over the Rockies at night in a Cirrus versus a TBM/PC12/P46T, nope. Not even close. 0/10. so there has to be a some qualification. There are gray/grey? (that one gets me every time, I learned to read in England ;-)) areas as well. Would I feel safer in a Cirrus at night over the Rockies than in a PA46 piston, I would take the glide ratio. Hiking, biking, skiing the Rockies, there are just a lot of really bad things that could happen off field there, even with a chute… that is 6’s. I am landing on a runway, and the glide ratio of a PA46 at night on a well planned route always allows that. Even over the Rockies. Throw in weather, night, Rockies, and I will take the PA46 10/10 times topping the weather at FL240/250, versus flying in it with all that winter weather over the Rockies entails. I think about this topic way too much, having thousands of hours in singles. One thing I firmly believe in, the SR22 with a chute is safer than an SR22 without a chute. But there are a lot of planes out there that are intrinsically safer. All planes have compromises.
How does the “glide ratio” help you over the Rockies and how can you possibly prefer GR over CAPS? That’s where your bias shows! The “glide ratio over the Rockies” will only let you live longer a couple of minutes … and would only make a difference if there was a runway you could reach. Not very likely for most of the Rockies.
That’s where route planning is important, to take advantage of that. There’s quite a bit of civilization, and airports, in the rockies, if you follow the maior interstates, like I70, I80 or I40.
Not saying X is better than Y, but a bit of planning goes a long way. Glide radio is a fantastic safety tool if used wisely. My airplane has so much glide ratio, that I fly away from my departure airport and the ForeFlight glide ring grows behind the airport farther and farther. If I lose my both engines anywhere on the climb, I can come back gliding just fine, terrain permitting of course.
If you could put a BRS in a late-model Bonanza that would have made my choice a lot harder. The Bo’s short/soft field capability, better dynamics, and just plane great looks are nothing to sneer at.
Feel kinda the same about the Piper M350. I like everything about the plane except the lack of a Plan B (BRS/autoland) if the pilot becomes inop (despite multiple offers, the GF will not take flying lessons), and the wingspan, mainly because anything bigger than a T hangar near me is harder to find than the money to buy the $#@! plane. Otherwise I’d be thinking real hard about ordering one in the next year.
While the AP Style Guide says “gray,” the Chicago Manual of Style says either is fine, so long as you stick to one. So you can consider your usage to be approved.
I think that this idea of safety is highly theoretical. And IFR (which is what we normally are talking about when discussing this type of plane) you follow airways and not highways …
CAPS would be absolutely and by far the better choice for a typical engine failure over the Rockies.
With a family of 5, I’d love a 206 or A36 with a chute but such things are pipe dreams me thinks. Now I’m in love with a G6, you never know what your love life holds in store for you
I cross the Rockies dozens of times a year, and I am never out of glide range to multiple airports from cruise altitude. Here are just a few pics of foreflight with the glide rings.
The software in my plane also lists the airports within glide and paints a glide ring around the plane on the moving map. The airports with a cyan box around them are within glide range. See below. Just plan your route accordingly and beware of GPS direct which can carry you over very remote areas.
I like to have options. The chute can save you when superior skills will not. Even if you are the safest pilot, some are not and you may encounter them - or they encounter you.
Like this recent midair, being discussed in a parallel topic., where one of the remarks by Marlon was
“So, it looks like the pilot was well known for disabling ADS-B out intentionally because he didn’t like the FAA tracking his moves. Now he’s dead because of that. Well done.”
Well the story has been told many times. I ordered a new Cirrus SR22 in 2004. The captain (wasn’t the captain then) wanted no part of my mid-life crisis, even when the Flight Academy sent an instructor and an SR20 to train me, while my new G2 SR22 was being built. Went to our first Migration in 2006, and I talked the captain into going to Mike R’s partner in command course. Funny, we found all of her notes from that class the other night and there were a boat load of them. Our next door hanger mates, John and Martha King, thought she would be a great pilot. No joy , she just wanted to go along for the ride. We became great friends with the Kings , and traveled everywhere with them. Well they got desperate and decided to take Karen up to Napa where we were building. They told Karen, it was a small dinner.
They had the future captain sit with their friend Harrison Ford. Well that was all it took.
She took her first lesson with a former King School instructor the week we got home, and got typed in the Eclipse 379.6 hours exactly 3 years later.
I promise never to tell her story again
There might be IFR routes through the Rockies on which airports are reachable gliding (see Charles’ post) but I still think that this is all highly theoretical …
Yes, on a blue sky day if you are in 20K feet you might reach an airport gliding. But what if there’s IMC below you? I have read posts from people who claim that glide into a valley/to an airport in IMC is possible with “synthetic vision”, but (at least for me) that is pure fantasy.
It “might” work in some instances … but would you rather try that or pull CAPS over a valley? I know what I would prefer.
There’s a lot of focus on engine failures, but there are many more issues you can face, that only a BRS addresses. A ripped or stuck cable to a control surface, severe bird strike, no visibility for some reason, like oil on the windscreen, severe icing, and so on. All stick and rudder skills in the world won’t save an uncontrollable aircraft or it’s content.
