Cecil Chapman wrote:

You heard wrong, at least according to Alan Klapmeier.


Here's the clip....

"And yet we get constant criticism about whether our airplane has gone
through FAA spin training. The fact of the matter is we looked at the
statistics, made a conscious choice during the design certification of the
airplane to say we can save more lives if we prevent the stall-spin event
from happening than if we allow it to happen and teach people how to recover
from it. If the airplane can't recover in the altitude available, then it
doesn't matter if you have shown the FAA that the airplane can recover.
So our approach was to prevent the accident from happening. We went to the
FAA and said we want the [equivalent level of safety - an alternate means of
complying with FAA certification criteria] for our improved stall
characteristics. In addition to the improved stall characteristics we wanted
them to include the parachute as an equivalent level of safety - in part
because we already had it on there and in part we had demonstrated that the
parachute could recover the airplane in less altitude loss in a spin than a
pilot could recover the airplane through normal recovery techniques."

Once again, in order to meet certification requirements since they wouldn't
or couldn't demonstrate spin recovery properties Cirrus had to come up with
an 'equivalent level of safety' which was the parachute.

I spoke with a Cirrus rep at a static display and they said the same thing,,
although he couched it in the guise of making the plane 'safer' he DID
indicate that the parachute was done as an alternative to
showing/demonstrating appropriate spin/stall characteristics.

This is certainly what I'd say if my design couldn't meet the FAA
stall/spin certification standards. :-)

Matt