Actually it could just be arrogance, incompetence, all sorts of things.
Aviation companies, along with any business where “compliance” (or “health and safety”) is a major factor in daily life, tend to fill up with useless old farts who are decades past their sell by date and who are looking for an easy life while counting the days to drawing their pension and playing golf.
In turn, this enables an army of creepers, crawlers and brown-nosers to climb undisturbed up the corporate ladder, and these are useless people too. When they infect the upper echelons then the company will definitely go nowhere.
Look at Bendix-King. They appear unable to even switch on a soldering iron these days, or at any time in the last ~15 years, while consuming tens of millions USD of Honeywell money 
Yes, and Cirrus uses that to their advantage.
The (dying) legacy manufacturers maybe consider it a “niche” to offer non BRS planes.
The fact remains that the ratio of fatal to non-fatal accidents for broadly similar aeroplanes is unaffected by the presence or otherwise of a BRS.
So if you have money to spend on a chute, you might as well flush it down the loo for all the safety that red handle would add to your flying. A marine, medical or mountain rescue charity probably offers more enhancement of personal safety for your dosh.
Jacko wrote:
The fact remains that the ratio of fatal to non-fatal accidents for broadly similar aeroplanes is unaffected by the presence or otherwise of a BRS….that red handle would add to your flying
But where does that ratio shifts in terms mission profile & hand piloting skills?
Cirrus type of flying have the worst combo in the latter vs say a super cub flyer who knows his strip/valley, surely that red handle is doing some magic?
Peter wrote:
I would be amazed if the cost to the manufacturer was anywhere near 100k.
That is not the cost of the system per se, but that is what Mooney claim the addition would be including a re-certification of the whole airframe. So certification cost split onto the number they can reasonably expect to sell plus the cost of the actual system. I’d estimate the system to be maybe 20-30k in material worth, but the effort to certify it would be in the tens of millions. That is how I understand Mooney came to the conclusion they could not do it as nobody would pay for it.
Bit of humours from the days where everybody was used to wear parachute while flying, that did includes the most bravest/skilled pilots
Jacko wrote:
The fact remains that the ratio of fatal to non-fatal accidents for broadly similar aeroplanes is unaffected by the presence or otherwise of a BRS.
The question in my mind for those stats are if they are operated the same way and if e.g. all CAPS deployments were analyzed along the lines of what would have happened most likely had they not been able to use it, how that would influence their figure. IMHO it would rise quite dramatically.
Remember, when Cirrus started out, the accident figures were not at all good until they started a vigorous training program which, as I am told, focusses on “Pull soon, pull often” mantra, that is if things go south, stop messing about and pull that shute and get a new airframe from us, we’ll gladly sell you one.
Then comes the fact that lots of people will fly non-BRS planes more restrictively with regads of night and low IMC, whereas BRS equipped planes do have a different risk profile in those situations. While forced landings at night or with low IMC are very hazardous, coming down on a shute in a similar situation has a better chance of survival or avoidance of bad injuries. So the comparatively low accident figures on non BRS planes may well stem from the fact that many people just don’t operate them into these conditions.
Snoopy wrote:
The (dying) legacy manufacturers maybe consider it a “niche” to offer non BRS planes.
I guess for most of them the grapes are simply hanging too high, i.e the cost of modification and recertification would bump the cost of the airplane to such an extent that it would not be possible to sell any. Prices are insanely high as it is. Cirrus was able to distribute the CAPS cost over a huge number of airframes whereas others can’t do that. IMHO, legacy airframes simply are not made for BRS systems. However, to contemplate new airframes without BRS is pointless imho.
The question in my mind for those stats are if they are operated the same way and if e.g. all CAPS deployments were analyzed along the lines of what would have happened most likely had they not been able to use it, how that would influence their figure. IMHO it would rise quite dramatically.
Remember, when Cirrus started out, the accident figures were not at all good until they started a vigorous training program which, as I am told, focusses on “Pull soon, pull often” mantra, that is if things go south, stop messing about and pull that shute and get a new airframe from us, we’ll gladly sell you one.
This has already been “done” in many “to chute or not to chute” threads but the basic issue is that when Cirrus got going, they implemented a form of marketing in the US which unearthed new strata of customers; people who previously had little interest in GA, probably due to its poor image of old wreckage flown by cantankerous old men. They had to do this to achieve success; just selling same old planes to the same old men would not get them anywhere.
And these new customers thought that flying is easy, and were told that if you screw up you pull the chute and your pretty smiling wife and smiling kids will all be saved (this is the totally direct image served by their advertising).
So they had loads of accidents, and loads of chute pulls which were mostly in circumstances where a pilot should not find himself to start with. If you read the list of pulls (it was posted and discussed here a few years ago) it is really quite cringeworthy.
Later they started offering training programmes, but these are not mandatory (other than de facto via insurance, in some areas).
The chute is useful (in terms of being a unique option to save your life) only in certain phases of a flight, and on average these form only a tiny % of one’s airborne time.
The end result is that the fatality rate is probably not hugely different from non chute types.
Additional controversy is generated by regular Cirrus claims that every chute pull saved the lives of those on board, which amounts to saying that no Cirrus pilot can land a plane off a runway in a way which is survived. This is obviously nonsense. Those without a chute do forced landings and mostly walk away.
That is not the cost of the system per se, but that is what Mooney claim the addition would be including a re-certification of the whole airframe. So certification cost split onto the number they can reasonably expect to sell plus the cost of the actual system. I’d estimate the system to be maybe 20-30k in material worth, but the effort to certify it would be in the tens of millions. That is how I understand Mooney came to the conclusion they could not do it as nobody would pay for it.
Mooney sales are as close to zero as you can get, so any up front cost inflates the airframe price excessively.
Any “tens of millions” figure is nonsense but the industry always does this because it is a wonderful justification which everybody swallows.
I am sure 20-30k is nonsense too, for an airframe manufacturer which is a Part 145 with in-house parts certification under the TC. They don’t have to buy “aviation parts” like us end users have to.
There is a similar theme in sailing.
Every time there is a tragedy of some sort, particularly a mass tragedy in a race, the focus is all on the safety equipment (what worked, what didn’t) instead of why that safety equipment was need in the first place.
Because of poor boat design which prioritises speed over seaworthiness and poor ego-driven decision making at sea, people end up in situations where the safety kit becomes the talking point. New things are thought of, more kit becomes essential (“don’t leave port without it!”), costs increase and the manufacturers add another wing to their converted water mill in Tuscany.
A defensive sailor in a solid sea boat is 100 times safer than a hot-head in a racing yacht carrying all the safety equipment one can buy. In the same way, someone with good airmanship in a legacy aircraft is safer than a Cirrus pilot who views CAPS as his main means of staying alive.
It’s just marketing, but it works. On the sea and in the air.
