I assume the argument to treats the chute pull differently surrounds liability. Remember the hull insurance is only part of it. If you pull the chute I suppose the risk of compensating for death of a passenger goes down. But the question will always surround the frequency of chute pulls.
I personally think the Cirrus is sensitive to maintaining the right airspeed. You don't easily notice a drop in airspeed and I think potentially this can lead to stalls. OK. The perspective with GFC90 autopilot has the envelope protection in there, but it remains a sensitive issue.
As far as I know the spin recovery and stall characteristics are normal or even quite good. The wing offset on the Cirrus is designed for optimal stall recovery characteristics.
I find the Cirrus easy to fly, but then fly a lot of hours per year in the machine. I don't think it is wise for beginning or low-hour pilots to be flying the Cirrus SR22 as it is fast and needs good attention.
As for comfort (seats, view outside, etc.) it is great. The avionics is great. Basically it is a great aircraft and I would not want to fly another one, except maybe a TBM850/PA46 for longer flights.
I too didn't think the Cirrus had strange behaviour.
This is interesting.
Obviously nobody doing anything remotely resembling normal flying is ever going to get anywhere near stalling it. Flying just isn't like that.
But maybe there is strange stuff that happens on the margins. I have often stalled my TB20 when trying to reach the ceiling - say FL200. One has to be quite careful up there. But the stall is a non-event. You get the warning horn some 8-10kt before the buffet and that is definitely "the time" for Plan B... Maybe the Cirrus does something weird?
Sure the payout on a chute pull will be less than the payout on killing 1 or more passengers (a pilot flying solo gets no money - unless his estate can sue somebody and the hull insurer gets landed with it, which is unlikely, or unless he has life cover with the same company) but there are quite a lot of accidents which in the traditional scenario might result in a forced landing with say a 30k damage (prop strike, etc) but with a chute pull it is nearly always a total loss i.e. 10x as much. The insurer I spoke to made this point... these things do add up in the premium calculation.
BTW I mentioned a Jetprop too. They wanted 25hrs with a specialist instructor.
You don't easily notice a drop in airspeed
But surely you notice the massive pitch-up? And the stall warning.
Of course, the stall warning will sound and you will feel the buffet and the envelope protection will even push the nose down to increase airspeed. However, when busy with the avionics, the approach, etc. and in the approach phase, it can be easy to see the airspeed drop without feeling anything or noticing. In any case, if you remove power a little, it will take some time to see the effect, so there is no immediate feedback on it and thus you need to watch out with this aircraft.
The other "nasty" thing is a short field landing in that at 77-80 knots there is not too much of a flare left and it kind of "drops" out of the sky on the runway. That is why lots of Cirrus pilots love to fly it at a little higher speed to a runway with some extra length and then flare it.
Take the above, incorporate something into your workflow and enjoy for the rest a great aircraft.
At 300hrs PIC, the premium is 20-30% extra (at best) and they want 50hrs training. Much below 300hrs, there is little prospect of even getting insurance. That would be the much more usual PPL case.
That does seem a bit extreme - I got to fly an S35 Bonanza with about 300-400 hours, and the insurance only wanted 5 hours with an instructor plus 5 hours flying it solo. I would have to imagine that the Bo is more workload than a Cirrus (the Bo of that vintage has an awful instrument panel, with half the engine gauges hidden behind the bit of the yoke that goes to the centre of the panel) plus retractable gear plus the "fork tailed doctor killer" reputation and pretty much as fast as the Cirrus.
Perhaps it's just because the hull value of a new Cirrus is in a completely different league to a ratty old late 60s S35 Bonanza.
Perhaps I have higher expectations from a pilot who has spent all the $$$ to buy a Cirrus and is prob90 a high achiever in his/her professional life.
If anything that should be a huge warning sign. High achievers often think because they are a high powered and highly competent {lawyer|doctor|investor|etc} that they will be high powered and highly competent at everything to the extent they don't recognise their own awful incompetence when doing something that's not their profession. Not recognising incompetence at playing golf is perfectly safe, but at playing airplanes is another. I've met people who are highly competent high achievers in their professions, but I wouldn't want to be even within half a mile of their aircraft (one guy we knew had a Beech Duke, and his preflight check was so cursory he wouldn't even notice if the wing outboard of the right engine was missing until he rotated for takeoff).
However, when busy with the avionics, the approach, etc. and in the approach phase, it can be easy to see the airspeed drop without feeling anything or noticing.
That - stalling on say an ILS - is easily done in any SEP if one is not watching the instruments, and has reduced power a lot earlier, e.g. to get the IAS below Vlo.
What I was concerned about is the high altitude loss of control. Obviously one won't be flying an approach up there.
Perhaps it's just because the hull value of a new Cirrus is in a completely different league to a ratty old late 60s S35 Bonanza.
This is going to be even more controversial than what I normally write 
but in the spirit of debate I think there are several factors in play:
The hull value is high today - though probably not higher than a Bonanza was in its day (a high perf IFR SEP always cost about the same in real terms i.e. about the price of a small house)
With a Cirrus, any loss - other than in the landing phase - is likely to be a total loss, and will be a total loss if the COPA programme is fully appreciated; this will inflate the average loss to the insurer
The Cirrus marketing, emphasising a similarity between a car and a plane, has made a lot of high achiever type customers believe that is the case. One only has to look at the number of postings on pilot forums (not this one as yet) by pilots who are working towards a PPL and who ask what is involved in flying their family of four from say UK down to say Italy, for regular holidays. The PPL school is hardly going to lay out the somewhat "complicated" VFR options on the table, and if the resulting PPL holder has the $$$, and sees the adverts, he will buy one and do what it says. Why not?
I wonder if anybody in the USA could phone his favourite insurer and ask him the same question as I did? A poll in the Socata group some years ago yielded a hugely higher premium for a Cirrus (which made the "lower premiums" a lie in America, suprisingly) but nowadays Cirrus discussion is banned there, on the order of the owner of the site.
If anything that should be a huge warning sign. High achievers often think because they are a high powered and highly competent {lawyer|doctor|investor|etc} that they will be high powered and highly competent at everything to the extent they don't recognise their own awful incompetence when doing something that's not their profession.
I think that is an equal problem for the training business, which is for the most part not set up to deal with such character type. Years ago I read an article in the UK flight training press by a very high profile UK instructor, who absolutely totally slagged off the stereotype high achiever PPL student, getting out of a sports car with a blonde girlfriend. I had met her many times and can well imagine she would have a problem with that type, but so do most instructors. As a result many high achievers "rent" an instructor for the time it takes, specially for them. That is possible in the USA but variously difficult/impossible in Europe, and anyway you might get one who does not know the type.
The hull value is high today - though probably not higher than a Bonanza was in its day (a high perf IFR SEP always cost about the same in real terms i.e. about the price of a small house)
I wonder, if that is true. I read (a while ago, may be flying magazine or on avweb, I don't recall) that todays planes are about twice to three times as expensive as the 1980s airplanes, if you transfer their purchace price into 2013 Dollars. Product liability insurances are said to get a big chunk of the new airplane purchase price. Although I wonder, if this is true for european manufacturers, too (i.e. Robin and their DR500, to stick to SEP)
cheers,
It's possible, though as with all inflation adjustments much depends on what exactly the hypothetical person spends their money on.
However I do not for a single moment believe that
Product liability insurances are said to get a big chunk of the new airplane purchase price
is the real reason, which has to be the vastly smaller volumes built today. The production volumes in the 1960s and 70s were about 10x higher than even Cirrus ever managed, and Cirrus at their peak were outselling all of GA put together.
My experience with insuring the Mirage and Meridian were that neither required the kind of training or hours you suggest are needed for the Cirrus.
I think you may have been given the 'standard' policy. I think in practice these things are often negotiated.
I also don't see any additional requirement for a pilot to fly on the Cirrus other than the transition training. I did both the official Cirrus Advanced Transition training (the IFR one) but that was not even required by the insurance company. It could also have been done by a non-official 'Cirrus' instructor.
It is a very capable aircraft and needs a good pilot to fly it. I visit a lot of Cirrus events and cannot confirm that the typical Cirrus pilot I meet is considering the Cirrus as a kind of luxury car. The pilots I meet are not all attending the Cirrus/COPA events, but all seem to be serious about their recurrent training and flying. Actually, about all fly IFR, so that separates them already in a positive way (experience/education) from the Piper Archer III (IFR equipped) I also fly. There most pilots hardly fly enough hours to remain current and most don't have an instrument rating.
Peter: come fly with me on a trip in the Cirrus. I am sure you will love it. :-)
