Iced up Cirrus crashes

" While there have been 3 fatal accidents this year in Cirrus aircraft,
there have been 16 fatal accidents in the last 10 days according to the
FAA incident reports. Without more analysis then "they are falling out of
the sky" it's very difficult to say what is going on.
Weather probably has played a big part in this. We have had more rain this
year than I can remember.
I hope to own a Cirrus after I get a few more hours and IFR rated. I called
to get a price on insurance and it was very expensive with my current hours
and rating.

insurance? of course. seems that the insurance companies would be
pretty good judges of the aircraft. what do they have to say? any
special stuff beyond what they demand on similar aircraft and yes, i
just realized that "similar" might be sticky.

dan

On 10 Feb 2005 20:41:13 -0800, "houstondan"
wrote:

insurance? of course. seems that the insurance companies would be
pretty good judges of the aircraft. what do they have to say? any
special stuff beyond what they demand on similar aircraft and yes, i
just realized that "similar" might be sticky.

They charge more for an SR22 than for a Glasair III.
Over 1/3 of what I was quoted for on a new TBM 700 as a low time pilot
(1100 hours in mostly high performance retract) with no turbine
experience.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com


dan

I have a friend with perhaps 300hrs TT and an instrument rating who is
buying a new SR20. The insurance company wants 25hrs make and model before
solo and another 25hrs before carrying passengers.

Mike
MU-2


"houstondan" wrote in message
oups.com...
insurance? of course. seems that the insurance companies would be
pretty good judges of the aircraft. what do they have to say? any
special stuff beyond what they demand on similar aircraft and yes, i
just realized that "similar" might be sticky.

dan

Great discription about what a software bug is... I too am a
programmer... errrr sorry... Software Engineer... and you hit the bug
description "nail on the head".. I don't think that the Cirrus issues
are because of bugs in the airplane... It may be "bugs" in the training
process but from what I can tell the airplane (hardware if you will) is
a good design and inherently safe... When I moved up to our Mooney from
the 172's that I flew for 3 years the insurance company required 10
hours dual and 10 hours solo before carrying pax... This seemed like the
minimum when I first started flying the airplane... I wondered if I
wopuld ever get the hang of flying it.. But, low and behold things
started to come together and I am now pretty comfortable flying the plane..

The biggest thing I found when moving up to a faster airplane is you
MUST plan ahead... We are talking many miles ahead especially if you are
fly high.. you may need 40-50 miles to decend to pattern altitude at a
speed where you can get the gear down... If you wait too long and think
you can just "Dive and Drive" you'll never get it slowed down in time..
(been there done that got the t-shirt).

That being said.... What kind of plane are you looking at?

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
Mooney 201 4443H

City Dweller wrote:

I have been following the Cirrus crash statistics closely as I was at one
point considering buying one. I ended up ordering another airplane, and I am
sure glad I did.

The sheer number of destroyed airplanes and dead bodies have gone way beyond
the point where you can use the "too-much-of-an airplane-for-the
typical-buyer" argument. When last December I heard a pilot at our flight
school say "they just keep falling out of the skies" I thought of it as
somewhat of an exaggeration, but not anymore. We are barely half-way through
February, and there's been three fatal crashes taking 5 lives already this
year, and 13 total. Yes sir, they do fall out of the skies with a vengeance.

I am a software engineer, and I deal with crashes every day -- software
crashes. Almost every recently released product crashes when put in
production, no matter how hard the programmers and testers pounded on it
during development and QA phases. Software usually crashes because of bugs.
A bug is by definition an error in the code which only surfaces in rare,
unusual circumstances. You can run the software package for days, months and
even years and never encounter the bug, because you were lucky never to
recreate that rare sequence of events in data flow and code execution that
causes the bug to manifest itself and crash the system. However, in a
real-world production environment, with thousands of users, the probability
of that happening increases greatly, and that's when the fun begins.

The reliability of software depends, among other things, on how serious the
programmer is about testing it, and whether he is willing to admit that an
occasional crash of his system maybe the result of a bug in the software,
not a "hardware problem", a common brush-off among my colleagues.

It seems to me that the general attitude of the Cirrus people is just
that -- "it's not a bug in our system, it's how you use it". Well, the grim
statistics does not back that up anymore. Cirrus is buggy, and them bugs
must be fixed before more people die.

-- City Dweller
Post-solo Student Pilot
(soon-to-be airplane owner, NOT Cirrus)

I am getting the Diamond DA40 Star. Slower than the SR22 and even SR20,
but its safety record is impeccable.

Now back to the bug question: I too agree that there is nothing wrong
with the Cirrus design, but that does not mean it can't have bugs.

A few weeks ago I watched a great program on TLC about NTSB's effort to
investigate a series of 737 crashes more than a decade ago. After years
of meticulous and thorough "debugging", the did find a bug in that
aircraft -- a tiny-teeny rudder valve which sometimes jams. You can
read more about it he

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/trib.../s_247850.html

Unfortunately, you can't expect that level of effort on NTSB's part
when investigating the crashes of small potatoes like the Cirrus, and
that's a shame. Cirrus will have to do it themselves, or risk having
their entire fleet grounded.


-- City Dweller



Jon Kraus wrote:
Great discription about what a software bug is... I too am a
programmer... errrr sorry... Software Engineer... and you hit the bug

description "nail on the head".. I don't think that the Cirrus issues

are because of bugs in the airplane... It may be "bugs" in the
training
process but from what I can tell the airplane (hardware if you will)
is
a good design and inherently safe... When I moved up to our Mooney
from
the 172's that I flew for 3 years the insurance company required 10
hours dual and 10 hours solo before carrying pax... This seemed like
the
minimum when I first started flying the airplane... I wondered if I
wopuld ever get the hang of flying it.. But, low and behold things
started to come together and I am now pretty comfortable flying the
plane..

The biggest thing I found when moving up to a faster airplane is you
MUST plan ahead... We are talking many miles ahead especially if you
are
fly high.. you may need 40-50 miles to decend to pattern altitude at
a
speed where you can get the gear down... If you wait too long and
think
you can just "Dive and Drive" you'll never get it slowed down in
time..
(been there done that got the t-shirt).

That being said.... What kind of plane are you looking at?

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
Mooney 201 4443H

City Dweller wrote:

I have been following the Cirrus crash statistics closely as I was
at one
point considering buying one. I ended up ordering another airplane,
and I am
sure glad I did.

The sheer number of destroyed airplanes and dead bodies have gone
way beyond
the point where you can use the "too-much-of-an airplane-for-the
typical-buyer" argument. When last December I heard a pilot at our
flight
school say "they just keep falling out of the skies" I thought of
it as
somewhat of an exaggeration, but not anymore. We are barely
half-way through
February, and there's been three fatal crashes taking 5 lives
already this
year, and 13 total. Yes sir, they do fall out of the skies with a
vengeance.

I am a software engineer, and I deal with crashes every day --
software
crashes. Almost every recently released product crashes when put in

production, no matter how hard the programmers and testers pounded
on it
during development and QA phases. Software usually crashes because
of bugs.
A bug is by definition an error in the code which only surfaces in
rare,
unusual circumstances. You can run the software package for days,
months and
even years and never encounter the bug, because you were lucky
never to
recreate that rare sequence of events in data flow and code
execution that
causes the bug to manifest itself and crash the system. However, in
a
real-world production environment, with thousands of users, the
probability
of that happening increases greatly, and that's when the fun
begins.

The reliability of software depends, among other things, on how
serious the
programmer is about testing it, and whether he is willing to admit
that an
occasional crash of his system maybe the result of a bug in the
software,
not a "hardware problem", a common brush-off among my colleagues.

It seems to me that the general attitude of the Cirrus people is
just
that -- "it's not a bug in our system, it's how you use it". Well,
the grim
statistics does not back that up anymore. Cirrus is buggy, and them
bugs
must be fixed before more people die.

-- City Dweller
Post-solo Student Pilot
(soon-to-be airplane owner, NOT Cirrus)

"City Dweller" wrote in message
ups.com...
I am getting the Diamond DA40 Star. Slower than the SR22 and even SR20,
but its safety record is impeccable.

Now back to the bug question: I too agree that there is nothing wrong
with the Cirrus design, but that does not mean it can't have bugs.

A few weeks ago I watched a great program on TLC about NTSB's effort to
investigate a series of 737 crashes more than a decade ago. After years
of meticulous and thorough "debugging", the did find a bug in that
aircraft -- a tiny-teeny rudder valve which sometimes jams. You can
read more about it he

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/trib.../s_247850.html

Unfortunately, you can't expect that level of effort on NTSB's part
when investigating the crashes of small potatoes like the Cirrus, and
that's a shame. Cirrus will have to do it themselves, or risk having
their entire fleet grounded.


-- City Dweller


True, but the 737 accidents were similiar, pointing to a similiar cause.

If an *inexperienced*, *probably fatigued*, pilot takes off into *known
icing*, *over mountains*, *at night* to fly over an *area known for weather
inhospitable to flying*, and crashes...I can think of a lot more likely
explanations than there being some weird flaw in a mechanical system.

Mike
MU-2

Jon:

Who granted your "engineer" status? I certainly hope it wasn't the NJ
Cosmatology Board.

There are no Software Engineers that I'm aware of, only a title for a
position, but no engineers. This is a legal thing, and why I ask,
because I also do software and have for years.

I decided to let the bugs in the software argument go lest I be called
a mainframe bigot.

Later,
Steve.T
PP ASEL/Instrument

Steve,

I was just joking about the "engineer" part so (hense the quotes)...
Sorry for the confusion... Since you are just a mainframe programmer I
should have spelled it out better.... (another joke) My bad!! I
thought the software bug comments were very accurate..

I workied on the mainframe for years... They suck!! Tandem is the way
to go....

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
Mooney 201 4443H

Steve.T wrote:

Jon:

Who granted your "engineer" status? I certainly hope it wasn't the NJ
Cosmatology Board.

There are no Software Engineers that I'm aware of, only a title for a
position, but no engineers. This is a legal thing, and why I ask,
because I also do software and have for years.

I decided to let the bugs in the software argument go lest I be called
a mainframe bigot.

Later,
Steve.T
PP ASEL/Instrument

Are you an Inspector, Aircraft?