Cirrus SR20 D-EXOS Crash Northern Germany

eddsPeter wrote:

One additional point which was not mentioned yet: the use of a stormescope would have been a help to the pilot too, if the accident was really weather related because of not knowing where the cell was. As far as I know ist the Cirrus in general equipt with stormscope, maybe I‘m wrong.

I’m not aware of many SR20s being equipped with Stormscopes, they aren’t really designed for anything other than light IFR journeys; the SR22 / SR22T (usually with FIKI capability) are a different kettle of fish and here I would expect to see them, though.

Noe wrote:

Depends where – The other day out of iceland (towards the UK) I still had occasional service at FL180 – Enough to send a few whatsapp messages (even pictures)

Yes true, especially around mountain terrain you can get an occasional connection even higher, but its not anything one can rely on. In fact I would say it will not work 98% of the time at that flight level. I tried it over many flights from FL100 to FL200 with phone placed at various location before finally concluding that it will not work and getting an ADL.

ADL product is great product for IFR flying. It has helped me a lot on quite a few occasions doing early heading changes to avoid large areas of CBs maybe 50 NM ahead. For IFR flight I think the value of in-flight weather is unquestionable. The decisions one can make from having an overview on a map is something that cannot be done only from looking at the stormscope nor visuallly looking at the clouds.

The pilot in this case clearly could have gotten the weather information before the flight, maybe he even did – we dont know. But since so many GA accidents overall are weather related I believe that free in flight weather would save a lot of lives.

Sebastian_G wrote:

- Some others figured out that below the cloud base of thunderstroms there is often quite good visibility and you have a good chance to fly VFR. But I think this is a high risk strategy. Heavy rain, hail and strong winds can fall out of the cloud and on top IMC conditions can form very quickly.

I agree and it could be the case here – have seen videos of tornados and funnel cloud coming out of the base of a storm cell in seconds with otherwise good visibility and base.

Anyway reading all the posts, it seems to me, that there must be another reason for the accident beside weather.

Because weather would be a much too obvious mistake (flying straight into the easily visible TS?) In this case?

I would not fly under a CB because you might get hit by lightning.

It can be expensive.

The risk from lightning is one out of zillions the risk from loss of control due to turbulence/icing in unplanned IMC but lightning seems to have a high psychological barrier on GA pilots enough for you to drive back home or land asap when you see one…

Ibra wrote:

The risk from lightning is one out of zillions the risk from loss of control due to turbulence/icing in unplanned IMC but lightning seems to have a high psychological barrier on GA pilots enough for you to drive back home or land asap when you see one…

It’s not psychological barrier – it’s reality and it happens more often than you think. Maybe not so often in small GA (although I know instructor who got three strikes – once in C172 and twice in A319) but it can happen even if you’re at (“safe”) distance from nearest Cb cell.

Steve6443 wrote:

I’m not aware of many SR20s being equipped with Stormscopes

Three out of the three SR20s I’ve flown had Stormscopes!

I am also sure they were equipped with windows.

Cobalt wrote:

I am also sure they were equipped with windows.

That would explain … but it must be a specific verions of Windows, otherwise many other plane of the same typs would have crashed :-)