Originally Posted by
JamesNoBrakes
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.
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.
The most important thing to remember is that
every situation is different. I'm not a big proponent of just "pulling the chute" whenever something goes wrong. In my 900+ hours of flying the Cirrus series, I found that it handled well at low speeds and we had to perform numerous "dead stick" landings during training. Granted, they were to a runway but slow speed handling was good. You're correct James, it is a high performance aircraft and the reason that there have been many Cirrus accidents is because of pilots with a "small logbook and a huge wallet". That's from the Cirrus sales rep.
I found myself flying home one evening in the middle of winter with a solid 200' ceiling at both the departure and arrival airports. There I was at 7,000 ft. on a moon lit starry night flying along with a solid layer 4,000 ft. below. I thought to myself, if this engine quits, I'm screwed and there the parachute would have been the
only choice.
Still a great handling aircraft and the autoflight system was excellent.
See ya Mates
