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Cirrus BRS / chute discussion, and would you REALLY pull it?

I’m happy to see that Piper is doing just fine – https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2019/july/22/piper-news-conference-osh

Also,it seems that the UL makers are doing OK..

EETU, Estonia

Mooney_Driver wrote:

For the certified market, we are almost there already. Cirrus is the only manufacturer to sell in sustainable quantities. Mooney is dead, Piper in ICU, Cessna has some residual sales and they do offer BRS as well if i am not mistaken. The rest sells in single digits. That is not a “mass market” that is not even a market.

There are several CS-VLA and CS-LSA aircraft manufacturers in Europe and AFAIU they are doing well. These are normal category aircraft that can be used for PPL training.

Last Edited by Airborne_Again at 25 Jan 18:09
ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Mooney_Driver wrote:

- Night flying: Engine failures at night are in any case life threatening. A parashute will increase the chances for survival massively.
- Low IMC: Same thing .With a conventional SEP, flying IFR to a ceiling below 1000 ft below the whole trip is dangerous. A shute will change the odds massively.
- Over Water: The Cirri with their fixed gear are dangerous to land in water as they very well may flip over. A ditching per shute is massively safer.
- Rough terrain: Same thing. The landing gear of the Cirrus is a massive obstacle to a safe landing in a field or other rough terrain where other planes can land gear up or have lower Vref to deal with.

In theory, yes, but let’s take a look at the real world. From that list, 6 pulled at night. Only 2-3 which could be said to be not caused by the pilot. To be fair, lets say 3. Of 11.6M flight hours, 3 accidents at night could have been fatal without a chute. That’s a rate of 0.026 per 100k flight hours. The fatality rate of Cirruses is 0.82 per 100 k flight hours. The fatality rate therefore could have been 0.0846 if it wasn’t for the chute. Another way to look at it is it happens every 3.9M flight hours. That’s every 441 years of continuous flight.

Flying at night is safer with a chute, but even with 11.6M hours of real data, it hardly makes a dent in the statistics. If those “safety conscious” Cirrus pilots really had been concerned about safety, and done proper training, proper planning, then 3 of those 6 pulls at night would be prevented. This is a good example of what I said above. A chute adds a little bit of extra safety overall, but only as long as the PIC takes safety serious i general. It’s not a magic wand that transforms things. I can say this because the fatality rate of Cirruses is still the same as GA in general.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

The latter is totally irrelevant in Europe for any form of serious flying as long as it is still restricted to day VFR and subject to restrictions of travel everywhere

Nonsense. Experimental can fly in Scandinavia exactly as they do in the US (VFR, IFR, no restrictions), and lots of other places.What is “serious flying” anyway? Flying a Cirrus, pulling the chute because the plane is iced down?

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

LeSving wrote:

What is “serious flying” anyway?

Flying from/to any part of Europe or outside Europe without any restriction and IFR if so desired.

Scandinavia is a part of Europe but in terms of how they treat experimentals they are pretty much an enclosed space. If your ambition is to fly in Scandinavia only, then you are fine with any of those planes, if you wish to go to central Europe, you are restricted to day VFR and need overflight permits almost everywhere. Which for us based here makes these planes useless. Yes, I know there are some folks who use them and put up with all the red tape but most people won’t touch them with a barge pole

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Flying from/to any part of Europe or outside Europe without any restriction and IFR if so desired.

So “without restriction” and “IFR if so desired” is “serious” ? in that case why? What precisely is “serious flying” ? What is more serious about flying inside the borders of USA than flying inside the borders of Scandinavia, or Nordic countries to be more precise?

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

I don’t know about experimentals, but haven’t seen any practical problems flying ultralights to germany or austria- central enough for me..
Regarding IFR- its nice to have, but at least where I live, it often also requires serious deicing capabilities to be useful.
Personally for me the biggest obstacle of using my plane as business transport is the fact that 2/3 of my foreign meetings are either in Arlanda, Karstrup or Gardenmoen, none of which is exactly GA-friendly..

EETU, Estonia

I have seen this morning on Facebook that a Cirrus chute was pulled in Aspen recently because they lost the airspeed indicator.

Would you not just set power + attitude to get a sensible speed, keep an eye on the GPS groundspeed and land fast on a long runway?

EGLM & EGTN

All speculation still. And even if it turns out to be true, I don’t think anyone would go: “hey, the airspeed is blank” – pulls chute.

always learning
LO__, Austria

BRS aside, is any other company investing as much as Cirrus in making sure that their pilots are adequately trained? I have just been offered, and strongly encouraged to take, a full 3 day course to transition to Cirrus because I’m buying a plane that left the factory over 10 years ago. All paid for by Cirrus

I can’t recall Mooney or Cessna ever feeling any responsibility for ensuring my training

EGTR

All paid for by Cirrus

That’s excellent, and I suspect the driving force behind it is the stuff further back in this thread. I also think this is the reason why the last couple of years of chute pull reports mostly have no information in them.

Insurance is going up everywhere, including – according to the last US AOPA mag – in the US.

BTW, referring to the posts further back about the accident reports being out there, for sure they are but with no aircraft tail numbers, or exact dates, it would take quite some digging to find them.

Interesting what one would do with an ASI loss. I suspect landing on GPS GS, and factoring in the wind at the destination, would be a lot easier for most pilots than the pitch+power approach. And head for a decent size runway.

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Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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