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Old 11-25-2012 | 09:41 AM
  #13  
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JamesNoBrakes
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Joined: Nov 2011
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From: Volleyball Player
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My take on Cirrus safety is that it's a high-performance wing. Many pilots flying the airplane do not have experience or the physical ability to fly it safely until later on in their piloting experiences. This creates some huge problems. Getting slow or increasing the angle of attack too much can cause unrecoverable spin situations. Even just getting slow without stalling can cause excessive rates of descent that can kill on a deadstick landing. Going fast because you shouldn't shock-cool the engine and the fact that it just doesn't like to slow down gets you into those panic "oh no!" situations. Even an experienced turbine pilot can get into trouble, if passing of this kind of airplane as "harmless as a 150 and not as complex as what I fly!". Sure, not as complex and doesn't require two pilots, but disregard some fundamental aspects of it and you are in just as bad of a spot as others.

I see this as a general trend with high performance singles. Nothing inherently bad or new, except slicker planes that go fast even with the gear down!, but a general disregard for the piloting skills that are necessary to fly them.

That said, nothing I mentioned above is intended to "blame" anyone, but I do feel that with any real problem, pulling the chute is almost always going to be a better option than dead-sticking it in, even if you do pull it off somehow. It's just not worth the risk. If it was a very slow and docile aircraft, then maybe, but it's composite, not the most crash-worthy, aircraft are notoriously un-crash-worthy to start with, and so on...

Besides, this is what insurance is for. If something really did fail or someone else was really at fault (improper maintenance that wasn't the pilot's fault, defect or flaw, etc), the insurance company will go after them and you'll get your money. Otherwise, you might as well not insure it...
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