Another Cirrus BRS deployment:

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...

Furthermore, your example is pretty odd too. A pilot who is qualified to
fly an ASR approach is unlikely to use the parachute, and one who is
unqualified to is better off using the parachute. Similarly, if VFR
weather
is within range, and the pilot knows about it, I can't imagine he'd use
the
parachute; conversely, if he doesn't know about it, it doesn't matter
WHERE
the VFR weather is.

I think we probably agree on when the parachute SHOULD be used. It is
indeed unknown if that is when it WILL generally be used in practice. It is
possible -- though by no means a fact -- that the Cirrus could attract a
certain demographic of pilot experience and mission profile which will lead
to "false" deployments of the chute in a situation which could be handled
conventionally.

It will be interesting to see the details as information on these accidents
become clear. Purely on a statistical basis, the odds seem likely to me
that 2 airplanes out of a fleet of 1,000 could develop unsolvable doomsday
scenarios requiring chute deployment on the same weekend -- but I cannot say
there is any real basis to that than gut feeling. We need to wait for the
details.

payouts are smaller. It's that they are less frequent. More importantly,
the BRS is likely to only be used when medical or death payouts are nearly
guaranteed, and in those situations, I assure the insurance company would
rather pay for the airframe.

You are correct that the parachute SHOULD only be used in those situations;
whether that turns out to be so in practice is unknown at present.


--------------------
Richard Kaplan, CFII

www.flyimc.com

Hull insurance cost is a small percentage of hull value, and
thus
pretty high on ANY high value aircraft.

Liability insurance rates (which pay medical/death payments) do not rise all
that much as airplane values rise.

Hull values rise substantially as airplane values rise.

For airplanes in the economic class as a Cirrus, hull insurance almost
certainly costs more than liability insurance.

For a commercial insurance policy on my P210, full in-motion and
not-in-motion hull insurance costs 4 times the price of liability
insurance -- that is no exaggeration.


--------------------
Richard Kaplan, CFII

www.flyimc.com




Agreed Richard. All one has to do is check the hull premiums on a Pilatus or
Lear to see that. Higher value, higher premium. The bigger COST to the
insurance company remains medical/death payouts

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear earlier. What I was trying to convey was
that high insurance premiums are not specific to Cirrus - they are common to
all insured high value items.
Whether insurance companies will look at lives saved by the BRS patrachutes on
Cirrus & some retrofitted Cessnas & thus lowver the total premium, remains to
be seen

John

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...

So what? None of the things you've mentioned have anything to do with how
the installation of a BRS would affect the economics of insurance a
particular airplane.

What I am saying is that before this weekend, the accident rate for the
Cirrus was already higher than expected in comparison to airplanes with
similar missions -- there was a good article about this recently in Aviation
Consumer. Now that there have been 2 more accidents in a fleet of only
1,000 we can be sure the underwriters will seriously take a look at the
numbers again and will not be likely to consider the statistics to be an
abberation.

Suppose it were the case that no one is injured in any BRS accidents but a
trend is noticed that pilots with a BRS tend to be conservative and pull the
chute in situations felt after-the-fact to be recoverable. In that case,
liability rates for a Cirrus might go down but hull rates could go up. If
hull insurance already costs more than liability for a Cirrus-class airplane
and liability insurance cannot go down to zero, the net effet of increased
hull insurance and some decrease in liability could well mean a substantial
increase in insurance costs for Cirrus owners.

Again, I certainly do not know for sure that this will occur... it is a
plausible scenario, though, based on the existing accident record of the
Cirrus. Only time will say for sure how this turns out.

--------------------
Richard Kaplan, CFII

www.flyimc.com

"Richard Kaplan" writes:

I think we probably agree on when the parachute SHOULD be used. It is
indeed unknown if that is when it WILL generally be used in practice. It is
possible -- though by no means a fact -- that the Cirrus could attract a
certain demographic of pilot experience and mission profile which will lead
to "false" deployments of the chute in a situation which could be handled
conventionally.

As far as we can tell, this has not been the case thusfar. With 1000+
planes in the air and several hundred thousand hours of time on the
fleet, there's no sign of this theoretical demographic. I suppose
something could shift radically such that this demographic suddenly
appears, and in sufficient numbers to skew the statistics, but at this
point experience has not borne out these fears.


It will be interesting to see the details as information on these accidents
become clear. Purely on a statistical basis, the odds seem likely to me
that 2 airplanes out of a fleet of 1,000 could develop unsolvable doomsday
scenarios requiring chute deployment on the same weekend -- but I cannot say
there is any real basis to that than gut feeling. We need to wait for the
details.

I'm guessing that you really meant that the odds seem *unlikely.*

Keep in mind that one person's situation that can be "handled
conventionally" can well be another person's "unsolvable doomsday
scenario." There was much armchair test pilot chatter about Lionel
Morrison's deployment following an aileron coming partway off; "*I*
would have tried to land it" and all that rot. Maybe someone could
have; maybe at landing speeds it would become uncontrollable and it
would have ended up in a smoking crater. Seems like he did the right
thing.

The Canadian pilot said that he got into a spin and couldn't recover.
The POH says to pull the handle. Perhaps a high-time pilot trained in
spins could have recovered conventionally, but it sounds like he did
not fit that profile. Seems like he did the right thing.

The Kentucky pilot that attempted to pull the chute (which didn't
deploy, resulting in an AD that appears to have had the desired
effect) got into unusual attitudes in IMC after an apparent gyro
failure with the autopilot engaged. Normally the NTSB reports in such
cases end with "witnesses observed the aircraft emerge from the clouds
in a steep nose-down attitude." I don't think there's too much
argument that pulling the handle is the wrong thing to do in such a
case, though he did manage to recover and put it down in a field (and
he was very lucky that there was enough VMC to get right side up again
and suitable terrain to land.)

The details of the Florida case are yet to be revealed, though another
high-time Cirrus pilot who talked to the high-time Cirrus pilot that
pulled the handle felt that there was "no doubt in his mind" that he
had "done the right thing at the right time."


Bottom line is that you don't get to back up in life and try another
choice and compare how things come out. You make your choice and stuff
happens. Making a choice that results in your walking away uninjured
is pretty hard to argue with when the alternative must remain unknown.

Certainly there is ample evidence that there are a lot of pilots out
there with lousy judgement; IMHO the consequential damage of a poorly
chosen parachute pull is likely to be a lot lower than a lot of other
bad choices.

"Richard Kaplan" writes:

Suppose it were the case that no one is injured in any BRS accidents but a
trend is noticed that pilots with a BRS tend to be conservative and pull the
chute in situations felt after-the-fact to be recoverable. In that case,
liability rates for a Cirrus might go down but hull rates could go up. If

Keep in mind that, on pretty much a daily basis, pilots (and
passengers) die in situations that feel "after-the-fact to be
recoverable." This underscores the fact that just because *you* feel
a situation is recoverable clearly does not mean that the pilot in
that plane could have recovered.

Happily, the insurance market is at least *somewhat* competitive, and
the Cirrus market has great promise (as well as risk) due to the fact
that Cirrus will build more planes this year than anybody.
Underwriters are sensitive to dollar losses and ultimately will price
premiums to accommodate their payouts. If there are a lot of dollars
paid on Cirri claims, the premiums will go up. If not, competition
will bring the prices down. It is generally the case that the
underwriters don't really care *why* they have to pay (short of
egregious or illegal behavior) but only care how much and how large
the premium pool is to cover the losses.

As a Cirrus owner I've seen my insurance premiums drop by 50% and then
go up by 80% (two fatal accidents in five days last year pretty much
tapped out the pool.) It's cyclic; they get scared when there are
losses to pay, and then undercut each other on premiums when things
quiet down. As the fleet grows, the depth of the cycles flattens out.

I think we can safely say that Cirrus premiums *will* go up and they
also *will* go down. It's not static by any means.

"Dave Katz" wrote in message
...
As far as we can tell, this has not been the case thusfar. With 1000+
planes in the air and several hundred thousand hours of time on the
fleet, there's no sign of this theoretical demographic. I suppose

Well, we do know that SOMETHING seems amiss in the accident statistics of
the Cirrus. There was a recent article in Aviation Safety which made this
clear by comparing accident rates of various airplanes.

The Kentucky pilot that attempted to pull the chute (which didn't
deploy, resulting in an AD that appears to have had the desired
effect) got into unusual attitudes in IMC after an apparent gyro
failure with the autopilot engaged. Normally the NTSB reports in such

Do you not think unusual attitude recovery ought to be within the capability
of an instrument pilot?
If we recommend that Cirrus pilots pull the chute whenever a gyro fails in
IMC, there will be an awful lot more parachute pulls as their vacuum systems
start aging. Perhaps a backup electric AI would be helpful on the original
steam-gauge Cirrus models.

The details of the Florida case are yet to be revealed, though another
high-time Cirrus pilot who talked to the high-time Cirrus pilot that

I agree it will be very interesting to see the details.

Bottom line is that you don't get to back up in life and try another
choice and compare how things come out. You make your choice and stuff
happens. Making a choice that results in your walking away uninjured
is pretty hard to argue with when the alternative must remain unknown.

I agree here. In fact, purely from the perspective of minimizing injuries
the chute should probably be pulled if the thought comes to the pilots mind
and he starts to debate himself. I agree that approach would make the
Cirrus quite safe -- the economics of insuring such an airplane are the
question though, and I guess we just have to wait to see how the statistics
work out. So far insuring a Cirrus seems to be a good bit more expensive
than one might have initially thought for an airplane designed with safety
first.



--------------------
Richard Kaplan, CFII

www.flyimc.com

"ISLIP" wrote in message
...

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear earlier. What I was trying to convey
was
that high insurance premiums are not specific to Cirrus - they are common
to
all insured high value items.

How do Cirrus insurance premiums compare to other retractables with the same
declared hull value?


--------------------
Richard Kaplan, CFII

www.flyimc.com

"Dave Katz" wrote:
....With 1000+
planes in the air and several hundred thousand hours of time on the
fleet, there's no sign of this theoretical demographic. I suppose
something could shift radically such that this demographic suddenly
appears, and in sufficient numbers to skew the statistics,
....

From what do you get demographic? Anyway, my crude method: FAA
registration records indicate the vast majority of the approx. 1,000
are corporate-owned, and many names suggest more than just holding
companies. That suggests significant % are business use, and many of
those owned by holding co's may be substantially biz too. The latest
Nall Report cites biz use as about 4 times safer than GA as a whole,
which tends to suggest the accident rate may be on the high side. The
average age of the fleet is about 2 yrs, so several hundred thousand
hours could be a bit high, and with 18 U.S. accidents, the rate thus
appears typical only for GA as a whole.

Fred F.

"TaxSrv" wrote in message
...

From what do you get demographic? Anyway, my crude method: FAA
registration records indicate the vast majority of the approx. 1,000
are corporate-owned, and many names suggest more than just holding

Take a look at Aviation Safety March 2004. The Cirrus SR20 fatal accident
rate per 100,000 hours is 3.91 and the SR22 rate is 1.34. This contrasts
with rates for the Cessna 182S of 1.09, Diamond DA20 of 0.28, Diamond DA40
of 0.00, and Lancair LC-40 of 0.00

Total accidents of the SR22 were 6 in 150,000 hours vs. the Diamond DA20
with 5 in 361,000 hours and the C182S with 30 in 645,000 hours.


--------------------
Richard Kaplan, CFII

www.flyimc.com

"Richard Kaplan" wrote in message
s.com...
"ISLIP" wrote in message
...

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear earlier. What I was trying to convey
was
that high insurance premiums are not specific to Cirrus - they are
common
to
all insured high value items.

How do Cirrus insurance premiums compare to other retractables with the
same
declared hull value?


All Cirrus are actually fixed-gear.