"clipclip" .

i'd say pretty much the same thing but in a different way - i have seen
many well-off pilots who (implicitly) think that having a glass cockpit
with the latest of everything is almost equivalent to a force field
that will protect them against anything - and if it doesn't, the BRS
will.


We keep hearing about these guys but they don't ever seem to say this
anywhere we can verify it. Can you?

the toys and gadgets distract the pilot from the real task at
hand - which is to fly well within the performance envelope. the fatal
accident record of the cirrus seems to support that. IIRC, its fatal
crash rate is higher than that of the rest of the GA fleet (someone
correct me if i'm wrong

No. Your assertion. You back it up.

i also seem to remember that insuring a cirrus is
limited to one (or very few companies) and carries a very high rate
because of these incidents.

Evidence. That's not my experience. Except in Canada. But that has
nothing to do with the accident rate.

that fact seems to get forgotten when the plane is sold as a "safest"
and "foolproof" plane.

Not my experience. And I've been through the sales pitch. Have you? How
do you know how they sell it?

most if not all the plane's mag reviews seem to
emphasize how failures are very unlikely or quasi-impossible.

What type of "failures"? There's rather a lot, you know.
however,

some recent cirrus accidents make the point - consider the recent one
where the pilot with low hours and a brand new plane took off with his
family, flew into IMC and perished. consider the pilot who flew over
the cascades, seems to have taken on severe icing, and tried to deploy
his chute which didn't function properly. or another pilot who was seen
doing slow steep turns and stalls at low altitude and finally got the
plane to spin into the ground. ... and i could bore you with many more
examples. unfortunately, this type of accident seems to be too frequent
in this airframe.

Again, you got some comparitive cites?

IMO, a serious commitment to airmanship, pilotage, and remaining well
away from the ragged bleeding edges of the performance envelope is the
only way to significantly improve the safety of flying. the truly weak
link in flying an airplane is the payload in the front left seat.

I don't think you'll find anyone who doubts that here.

m