Iced up Cirrus crashes

Stefan wrote:
That is exactly what Dan said...excess pilot confidence which leads
to poor judgment which leads to a dead pilot.

I've understood Dan's post as Cirrus specific, something to the lines
that the SR22 is difficult to fly and requires more training. Flying
into icing conditions at night is nothing Cirrus specific. But I may
be wrong.

Overconfidence in the airplane's capabilities could've been part of the
go-decision, and that overconfidence could be, in a way, cirrus
specific. I think that was Dan's point.

regards,
Friedrich

--
for personal email please remove "entfernen" from my adress

Richard Collins wrote about this type of things 10 years ago. He
looked
at why us Mooney owners pay more in insurance than Arrow pilots and
why
Mooneys have more wx accidents.

This is all well and good, but the reality is that the Mooney is a
significantly different airplane. It's 10-15 kts faster than an
equivalent Arrow on the same engine and fuel burn, and it actually has
a higher useful load. In fact, even the Comanche 180 is faster than an
Arrow and has a higher useful load and a bigger cabin - on 20 hp less.
That's because, as I've mentioned before, the Arrow isn't really a
complex airplane - it's a Cherokee with a couple of extra levers. It
handles like a Cherokee - stable and docile. The Mooney is more
demanding to fly, and will overload a pilot faster.

In other words - it's not just the mission, it's the airplane too.

Michael

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)

Peter MacPherson wrote:

What is their definition of "crash"?

The NTSB definition of "accident."

George Patterson
He who would distinguish what is true from what is false must have an
adequate understanding of truth and falsehood.

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)


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.

" 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 Thu, 10 Feb 2005 16:13:20 +0100, Stefan
wrote:

Dave Stadt wrote:

That is exactly what Dan said...excess pilot confidence which leads to poor
judgment which leads to a dead pilot.

I've understood Dan's post as Cirrus specific, something to the lines
that the SR22 is difficult to fly and requires more training. Flying

Part of that is true. It's not difficult to fly, but it's hot and
slippery and does require more training. Sirrus has a very
comprehensive training program. The transition to the SR22 is little
different than transitioning to an A-36 except for the gear. The
speed is far more of an issue than the gear. There appears to be a
set of pilots who think of it as just another fixed gear airplane with
an extra safety factor to keep them out of trouble. It has fixed gear,
but it is not just another fixed gear airplane.

It takes a different mind set to fly a 200 MPH plus airplane than it
does a 130 MPH airplane and it's not something that many adjust to
quickly. You easily have to be thinking twice as far ahead.

Pilots should think of the Cirrus in the same light as an A-36 without
having to think about lowering the gear. The Cirrus is actually a bit
faster than the A-36 and this creates a situation where we have a 130
MPH mind in a 200 MPH airplane and it is not a trivial difference.

Not only does the airplane travel a lot faster, you can get into
trouble a lot faster and it is far less forgiving than a Cherokee,
172, or even 182.

into icing conditions at night is nothing Cirrus specific. But I may be
wrong.

I think it's part of that mind set that thinks of a fixed gear
airplane with a BRS for safety and they use that to rationalize
launching into conditions they'd never go near in a conventional
airplane such as the 172.

When my insurance company wanted 25 hours of dual before carrying
passengers I thought it was a bit much, but it took me most of that to
catch up with the airplane although a lot of it was under the hood.
After that it took another couple hundred hours before I really knew
the airplane. It still teaches me something quite often.

A late friend who was a Bo specialist once asked after observing me,
come down, slow down, and use minimal runway, "Do you think you could
have done that two years ago?" and the answer was, "no".

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

Stefan

("greenwavepilot" wrote)

snip
Michael, I am training in a Diamond DA-20 C1, incidentally, the only
composite airplane on my flight schools ramp. I am flying in upstate
SC. This morning, at 8:15 the top surfaces of the wings on the C1 were
iced significantly, as was the nose and fuselage (tail boom). Outside
air temp was 41*F/Overnight low was 40*F. Plane is tied-down, morning
sun was directly on wing surfaces, no intervening shadows. My lesson
was delayed, of course.


There can be a thermal "dip" right before sunrise, right about at wingtip
height. Duck hunters and deer hunters will confirm (and curse) this
temperature phenomenon - forget what it's called.

41F overnight? 40F at 8:15? And still ice?

So it either go down to 32F at or near your wing, or it was below 32F a
number of feet, maybe many, many feet above your wing? Or your wing was 32F
at some point in the early morning? Wonder what it was?

Also wonder what the height of the temp reading instrument is?

Our local airport can report 40F with an overnight low of 36F yet there will
sometimes be "white-ice-dew" on the grass those mornings - usually in the
fall. We keep track of this because of our flower garden and outside plants.
Minnesota flowers in late October are a night-by-night proposition. Ooh,
there go the Impatiens.

Our airport's automated weather reporting station is less than two miles
away. Plus geologically, we are all at an identical elevation sharing the
same glacially flat sandy river bottom. This area was all sod farms just a
few years back - no other farming is sustainable in this area. Anyway, we
usually always agree with the airport temps - here at home, in the car,
neighbors thermometer, etc.

37F-40F and frost on the grass in the morning is common here.


Montblack

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