Cirrus... is it time for certification review?

"Kyle Boatright" wrote in message
. ..
Any aircraft has a baseline accident rate. I think the Cirrus has a
higher accident rate because a handful of pilots get themselves into a
mindset where they are willing to enter conditions they would have not
entered without the big round "insurance policy". Often they get away
with pushing things. Sometimes they don't, and those accidents are the
ones that are taking the Cirrus accident rate to higher than predicted
levels.

The problem is with the pilots, not the airplanes.

I've yet to see anyone document an accident rate that is actually higher
than might be expected (never mind "predicted"...who has predicted a
specific accident rate for the Cirrus, and why should we believe that
prediction?).

A quick NTSB database search shows in the last six months 4 accidents (2
fatal) involving a Cirrus SR20, and 52 (5 fatal) involving a Cessna 172.
The SR22 was involved in 7 accidents (2 fatal), while the Cessna 182 was
involved in 36 (6 fatal).

One might say that the fatal accident rate seems disproportionate (50% of
the SR20, 25% for the SR22 versus 10% for the 172 and 20% for the 182), but
at the sample sizes present, there's absolutely no reasonable way to draw
any valid statistical conclusion (and note that for the SR22 and the 182,
the rates are actually similar).

The fact is, none of these airplanes are actually involved in fatal
accidents all that often, and the absolute numbers for overall accidents are
significantly lower for the Cirrus types than for comparable Cessna types
(of course, with a presumably much smaller fleet size, that's to be
expected, even without accounting for differences in utilization).

So, it seems to me that before we start throwing around statements like "the
problem is with the pilots, not the airplanes", it ought to be established
that there *is* a problem in the first place.

Pete