Cirrus... is it time for certification review?

"john smith" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Kyle Boatright" wrote:

Flying magazine (or AOPA?.. dunno) ran the numbers a year or so ago and
compared the accident rate between Cirrus and competitive models. I
don't
have a copy at hand, but there was a significant difference in accidents
with Cirrus having a much higher rate than the other A/C.

And in the past year, the numbers have gotten worse.
Accidents and incidents (from theFAA and NTSB databases)
1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
SR20 1 0 2 3 0 1 2 7
SR22 - - 2 2 3 8 12 15

As someone else pointed out, you have to consider the number of aircraft in
service and, even better, estimate the fleet hours for the time period. The
article I mentioned attempted to do those things. A simple count of
accidents won't.

KB

Thomas Borchert wrote:

This group is really going downhill fast, if differing opinions backed
up by facts are now considered to be a no-no.

It ebbs and flows like a large body of water. Some weeks are good, others
are tough.

I always enjoy reading your perspective on these aircraft.

--
Peter

john smith wrote:
With the recent spate of Cirrus accidents, the question arises, "Is it
time for a special certification review?"

For an unrelated project, I downloaded the FAA aircraft registration
database a couple of weeks ago. (Available at:
http://www.faa.gov/licenses_certific...raft_download/ )
I just did a couple of quick queries on it that might help answer the
question of what the Cirrus fleet size is.

Total Cirrus Design SR-20 entries in the master file: 597
Total Cirrus Design SR-22 entries in the master file: 2022

SR-20 entries in master file, listed by airworthiness date:

39 (blank)
1 1981
1 1997
5 1999
78 2000
46 2001
84 2002
96 2003
78 2004
86 2005
83 2006

If you assume that each aircraft went into service the year of its
airworthiness date, you can get the fleet size by year:

End Fleet
of size
1997 2
1999 7
2000 85
2001 131
2002 215
2003 311
2004 389
2005 475
2006 558 (through early October)

SR-22 entries in master file, listed by airworthiness date:

174 (blank)
121 2001
262 2002
304 2003
431 2004
442 2005
288 2006

Fleet size by year:

End Fleet
of size
2001 121
2002 383
2003 687
2004 1118
2005 1560
2006 1848 (through early October)

As a comparison, I did the same queries for the Cessna 172, including
the models 172, 172[ABCDEFGHIJKLMNPQRS], 172RG, P172D, R172[EGHJK],
T172, and CE-172-R172. Because this covers a much longer period of
time, some of the assumptions above are not as likely to be valid.

Total Cessna 172 entries in the master file: 26697

Cessna 172 entries in master file, listed by airworthiness date:

1825 (blank)
13 (garbled)
79 1955
780 1956
540 1957
447 1958
517 1959
494 1960
457 1961
448 1962
608 1963
782 1964
901 1965
909 1966
507 1967
765 1968
721 1969
438 1970
463 1971
625 1972
979 1973
1065 1974
1202 1975
1387 1976
1430 1977
1289 1978
1294 1979
880 1980
725 1981
248 1982
163 1983
159 1984
157 1985
97 1986
23 1987
27 1988
41 1989
42 1990
21 1991
38 1992
49 1993
41 1994
48 1995
48 1996
228 1997
344 1998
381 1999
385 2000
295 2001
291 2002
277 2003
216 2004
312 2005
196 2006

Fleet size by year:

End Fleet
of size
1955 79
1956 859
1957 1399
1958 1846
1959 2363
1960 2857
1961 3314
1962 3762
1963 4370
1964 5152
1965 6053
1966 6962
1967 7469
1968 8234
1969 8955
1970 9393
1971 9856
1972 10481
1973 11460
1974 12525
1975 13727
1976 15114
1977 16544
1978 17833
1979 19127
1980 20007
1981 20732
1982 20980
1983 21143
1984 21302
1985 21459
1986 21556
1987 21579
1988 21606
1989 21647
1990 21689
1991 21710
1992 21748
1993 21797
1994 21838
1995 21886
1996 21934
1997 22162
1998 22506
1999 22887
2000 23272
2001 23567
2002 23858
2003 24135
2004 24351
2005 24663
2006 24859 (through early October)

Matt Roberds

On Sat, 28 Oct 2006 17:10:46 GMT, wrote:

If you assume that each aircraft went into service the year of its
airworthiness date, you can get the fleet size by year:

Actually, that date (fields 229-236) relates more to the current owner, than the
manufacture date. My airplane, for example, was built in 1982 but the
Certificate Issue Date is when I registered the aircraft in 1996.

Fields 52-55 contain the official "Year Manufactured." Unless the FAA has
revamped its file format, in which case I am going to be well and truly ticked
off (since I have a ton of queries, etc. that would have to be altered to match
while maintaining their compatibility with previous years).

The effect of using the Certificate Issue Date would be to skew the results
towards later years, since a, say 1998 plane sold to someone in 2004 would show
as a 2004 model.

Nice idea, though...re-run your query using the Year Manufactured, and let's
have another look at the data.

Ron Wanttaja

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Ron Lee" wrote in message
...
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, from the reports I have seen about Cirrus crashes it is clearly
pilot error. Of course the same probably applies to all aircraft
types.

Yes, it does. I guess I should clarify that I am interpreting the
statement
"the problem is with the pilots, not the airplanes" to mean that the
Cirrus
has an unusual problem with the pilots as compared to other airplanes. I
agree that the statement "the problem is with the pilots, not the
airplanes"
applies to pretty much any airplane. In that respect, the Cirrus is no
different from any other similar airplanes.

Pete

I guess that is why they have type ratings. Rather than a certification
review should there be a "type rating" required for a Cirrus. Wouldn't that
be a slippery slope.

Howard

On Sat, 28 Oct 2006 10:06:04 -0400, Roy Smith wrote:

In article ,
"Roger (K8RI)" wrote:

In a Bonanza if you get into trouble they
tell you to put the gear down and forget the doors. When the gear goes
down even at pattern speed it feels like some one put the brakes on
although the brakes with those tires don't have that much authority on
the runway. :-))

The best way to slow a retract down is to put the gear down in the air, and
pick it up again in the flare. :-)

I know it works in the air, but I'd as soon pass on trying the other
part:-)) A few years back we had a Mooney come in gear up. He said
it collapsed, but I think it collapsed trying to jack the airplane
back up:-)) At any rate that plane skidded about 2500 feed down the
runway before sliding off into the grass where it quickly stopped. I
don't normally use that much runway without ever touching the brakes.
BTW it was their first flight after the annual.
Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

Doing a little math:

And in the past year, the numbers have gotten worse.
Accidents and incidents (from theFAA and NTSB databases)
1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
SR20 1 0 2 3 0 1 2 7
SR22 - - 2 2 3 8 12 15
TOTAL 1 0 4 5 3 9 14 22
rate (%): 50 0 2 1 .3 .6 .7 1
fleet size: 2 7 206 514 902 1491 1949 2323
SR22 fleet 121 383 687 1180 1560 1848
SR20 fleet 2 7 85 131 215 311 389 475

So, each year a bit less than one percent of the fleet bites it. The
rate seems to be increasing slightly in the last few years, but the
sketchiness of this data precludes a conclusion based on that.

To compare with the Cessna fleet (bearing in mind the errors in the year
data due to registrations), I'll just add the last five years of fleet
size, getting something like 125,000. Five years of accidents at a 3/4%
rate (the last five years of the Cirrus rate, eyeballing it) would imply
something like a thousand C-172 crashes.

So, were there "something like a thousand" C-172 crashes in the last
five years?

Jose

Fleet info source from 's post Oct 28, 1:10 pm,
summed for SR20 and SR22. I added the total fleet size (by
airworthiness date), figuring it was unlikely that the Cirrus fleet
would have accumulated many date errors yet due to sales.
--
"Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can't see where
it keeps its brain." (chapter 10 of book 3 - Harry Potter).
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Happy Dog" wrote in message
m...
"Dave Stadt" wrote in message
...

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"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).

Apples and oranges. The 182 fleet is many times larger than the SR22
fleet. And the 172 fleet is near infinite compared to the Cirrus fleet.
The numbers look pretty bad for Cirrus.

Did you adjust for the kind of flying done by each? No, you didn't.

moo

The flights all involve an equal number of takeoffs and landings only some
are more successfull in the landing department than others.

On Sun, 29 Oct 2006 03:34:05 GMT, Jose wrote:

So, each year a bit less than one percent of the fleet bites it. The
rate seems to be increasing slightly in the last few years, but the
sketchiness of this data precludes a conclusion based on that.

To compare with the Cessna fleet (bearing in mind the errors in the year
data due to registrations), I'll just add the last five years of fleet
size, getting something like 125,000. Five years of accidents at a 3/4%
rate (the last five years of the Cirrus rate, eyeballing it) would imply
something like a thousand C-172 crashes.

So, were there "something like a thousand" C-172 crashes in the last
five years?

From January 1st, 2002 to December 31st, 2004, the GA average fleet accident
rates were as follows:

Overall: 0.58%
Homebuilts: 0.80%
Rotorcraft: 1.63%
Robinson: 3.83%
Cessnas: 0.56%
Cessna 172: 0.62%
Piper: 0.47%
Piper Super Cubs: 1.02%
Beech: 0.45%
Beech 33, 35, & 36: 0.43%

To get the above results, the total number of accidents in the three-year period
were divided by the total aircraft of that type registered on 1 January 2005,
and the result divided by three to produce a yearly average.

Note that the Beech, Cessna, and Piper figures may be artificially low, due to
old aircraft that are still on the registry but not actively flying. Aircraft
can be abandoned or even scrapped without telling the FAA, hence they remain on
the register. The FAA is currently working on weeding out these old
registrations.

I haven't run the fleet accident rates for the Cirrus....guess maybe I'll have
to take a look. If, as you say, the accident rate is about 0.75%, that's in the
ballpark of the 172.

Ron Wanttaja

Jose wrote:

Doing a little math:

And in the past year, the numbers have gotten worse.
Accidents and incidents (from theFAA and NTSB databases)
1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
SR20 1 0 2 3 0 1 2 7
SR22 - - 2 2 3 8 12 15

TOTAL 1 0 4 5 3 9 14 22
rate (%): 50 0 2 1 .3 .6 .7 1
fleet size: 2 7 206 514 902 1491 1949 2323
SR22 fleet 121 383 687 1180 1560 1848
SR20 fleet 2 7 85 131 215 311 389 475

So, each year a bit less than one percent of the fleet bites it. The
rate seems to be increasing slightly in the last few years, but the
sketchiness of this data precludes a conclusion based on that.

It is good to see some fairly complete data. I agree that the
statistics are such that you can't draw a lot of conclusions as yet, and
when the fleet size was less than 500 it is especially troublesome as a
couple of crashes has a large affect on the percentages. However, as
the fleet has grown beyond 1000 and the rate is increasing nearly
linearly, that is something to be concerned about, in my opinion.


Matt