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Making Cirrus Safe Again, and risk management

Given we have lost two Cirrus in Europe in the past two days, I thought maybe we could have a productive discussion. It does not relate to those particular accidents.

I say the title in jist – the Cirrus is far safer now than the original articles. Take some innovative examples of how safety has improved in later models:

- ESP has more or less eliminated LOC accidents since it was fully implemented with low-speed protection.
- CiES fuel guages integrated into Perspective/Perspective+ has eliminated fuel exhaustion accidents.
- Beringer Brakes – no brake fires since Beringer became standard.
- FIKI – no icing accidents in FIKI equipped aircraft.

I appreciate a great number of pilots wish to be “responsible” for their own faith and therefore wish to volunteer for a high level of risk – for example, some pilots still think the CAPs parachute is only for weak pilots. I feel we are probably maxing out the ability of humans alone to materially reduce the fatality rate of .89/100,000 hrs (depending on year) in SEP and to move past this point, we actually need to reduce the skills required to fly.

It would be great to have some well thought out suggestions from other pilots on how Cirrus could improve their “system”, I’ll start with a suggestion:

Approx 30% of NTSB reported Cirrus accidents are in the landing phase. Almost all of the reports refer to a “bounce” or “multiple bounces” and typically conclude on the left side of the runway after power is applied. So my safety suggestion to improve the “system” is to add a landing gear damper, like on a trailing link aircraft such as the DA42. The DA42 does NOT have a similar propensity to bounce and with the gear down, doesn’t suffer the same landing issue. I suggest fitting this device or similar to perhaps solve most of these accidents:

https://www.beringer-aero.com/en/node/739

Make it retrofitable and the safety numbers dramatically improve.

Last Edited by pistonfever at 18 Jul 22:00
Channel Islands

This sounds like a PIO problem and one that could be addressed by better and more focused training rather than a mechanical fix.

Maybe getting rid of the spring loaded flight control system would avoid the low altitude stall „bite“.

always learning
LO__, Austria

Da42 is by far the easiest plane I’ve landed (I can’t recall ever having a bounce and short field is super easy. Funny that the DA40 is one on the hardest!

Last Edited by Noe at 19 Jul 00:56

Put the pilots in a Luscombe, get them to the point when they can make circuits safely, then they won’t have a problem landing a Cirrus ever again.

pistonfever wrote:

We need to take responsibility away from the pilot somewhat and make the system safer. Without doing this, we will be the last generation to accept the inherent risks associated with being PIC.
I’m not so pessimistic – people still do ride motorcycles..
EETU, Estonia

The Motorcycle is an interesting analogy over the forty years I have been riding motorcycles things have got safer because of better brakes, steering, lights and especially tyres and all this despite the vast increase in power output.

However the biggest increase in safety is due to education of the road going public, when I started riding motorcycles it was just after the UK press had decided that motorcyclist were the next threat to an orderly society and took any and every opportunity to deride motorcyclists. This resulted in other road users simply ignoring motorcycles to the point that when a policeman I know arrived at an accident the middle aged lady who has seriously injured a motorcyclist said “ it was only a motorcycle “ dismissing the event because she felt she had only injured a lower life form.

As time moved on the public view and consideration of motorcycles improved first with the very clean cut Barry Sheen winning world championships and then with the very successful government Think Bike road safety advertisements.

Now I find a much greater awareness of motorcycles and acceptance that consideration should be given to these more vulnerable road users and this is due to the improvement in public attitudes.

In short the increase in motorcycle safety is largely due to cultural changes and safety education and the lesson to draw from this is the attitude of the pilot has a far greater influence on flight safety than a ballistic parachute or any other safety system.

Safety systems may get you out of a bad situation but most of the time pilot attitude and education will stop you getting into that situation in the first place.

Noe wrote:

Funny that the DA40 is one on the hardest!

??
Apparently all the pilots I have given a DA40 checkout were aces then.
huv
EKRK, Denmark

I’m definitely for automation and applying new technologies because they significantly lower pilot’s workload but basic skills are what is missing when bouncing on landing. Flying skills will improve your survival chances in almost all incidents/accidents while reducing pilot only to systems manager leads to complacency and higher rate of mistakes.

LDZA LDVA, Croatia

Silvaire wrote:

Put the pilots in a Luscombe

Or an Auster. I’ve never flown a plane with such a propensity to bounce on landing :-)

Andreas IOM
54 Posts
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