I Fly A Cirrus - Why Do You Hate Me?

My plane on the grass field at Katama Airpark on Martha's Vineyard.

It’s as perennial as the rise of the sun in the East. Each time a Cirrus aircraft has an accident, aviators on social media take to their keyboards to bemoan how pilots of the Cirrus are not skilled or the aircraft themselves are somehow flawed. And God forbid you pull the chute in an emergency. Apparently, there is no sin greater than this. I know some of this might be good-natured ribbing. But a meaningful amount (a majority?) of it seems to be real disdain – for the pilot and the plane. Much of that disdain comes through in comments that have common themes. And all those themes, under scrutiny, are not based in any reality.

Cirrus Pilots Aren’t Good Pilots

This is one of my favorites. Does the plane you fly make you a bad pilot? That’s what you’d have to believe to buy into this common refrain. But here’s the thing – few Cirrus owners learn to fly in a Cirrus.  I had a few hundred hours in Cessna 172s, Cessna 182s, Cherokees, Archers, and a Cessna Cardinal (the first plane I had an ownership stake in) before I ever set foot in a Cirrus. Was I a good pilot in the first planes I flew and then became an incompetent one once I had a sidestick instead of a yoke? Of course not. To believe this bit of nonsense, you’d have to also believe that some planes make you a better pilot. When you turn the argument around in this way, I think we can agree that it’s just plain silly. Poor aeronautical decision making and/or poor “stick & rudder” skills can get you in trouble in any plane. If you lack both in one plane, you’ll lack them in another. And there’s no evidence that Cirrus pilots are any less capable than the rest of the general aviation pilot community.

The Cirrus Parachute is a “Crutch”

Most of the commentary around Cirrus pilots not being capable is related to the pulling of the chute in an emergency. A pilot of a Cirrus in California recently pulled the chute which was enough of a demonstration of poor airmanship for many in and of itself.  But this pilot had the misfortune of coming down in what appeared to be a wide-open, flat, and smooth field. A picture of the scene showed the broken airplane in that field with its parachute lying next to it. The critics pounced. Why wouldn’t the pilot have just landed in the field rather than destroy a perfectly good airplane (except for the engine apparently) and sustain some injuries, which this pilot did in an uncommon outcome for a parachute deployment?

Let me start an answer to that question by saying that in Cirrus Embark training, which is provided to the purchasers of Cirrus aircraft (even if is sold on the aftermarket), it is drilled into new owners that unless you are assured of making a runway or other suitable paved surface, you should pull the chute in the event of a loss of power to give yourself the best chance of survival. That does beg the question, why would that be the guidance? Why isn’t a cornfield good enough?

To understand the answer to that question, I’d encourage you to listen to this podcast by Max Trescott of Aviation NewsTalk. While Max is a Cirrus CSIP (Cirrus Standardized Instructor Pilot), with over 5,000 hours in Cirrus aircraft, he was also the 2008 National Flight Instructor of the Year and his podcast is all about being a safe general aviation pilot, no matter what you fly. In the episode linked above, Max talked about the physics of an off field landing, comparing a Cessna 172 and a Cirrus.

As Max points out, the stall speed with full flaps in a Cessna 172 is around 39 knots. So, in an emergency landing you are touching down – if you do everything right – at around this speed, maybe slightly higher. Let’s call it 40 knots. The stall speed in a landing configuration in most Cirrus models is around 60 knots, or 50% greater than that of a Cessna. This is critical, because kinetic energy is directly proportional to the mass of an object and the square of its velocity. Without doing all the math here, that means that the energy your body and the aircraft will have to absorb in a Cirrus off-field landing is at least 2.25 times greater than that in a Cessna (I say “at least” because in most cases the Cirrus will have more mass than most light trainers, so that too increases the kinetic energy).

This isn’t a problem if the landing can be accomplished in the same way it is when it’s done on a paved surface. The long roll out on a smooth surface dissipates all that energy. But in virtually any field you won’t get a smooth roll out. Those who have flown into even well-manicured grass strips know how bumpy a ride it is. Land on an unimproved field at high speed with small wheels and the bumps can turn into stresses that are disastrous. If a rut or a hole in a field “grabs” onto one of your wheels shortly after you touch down – i.e., when energy is very high – the sudden stop will be dissipated through your bones and soft tissue and the metal of the plane. The day will end badly. It can still end badly in a Cessna 172 too, but obviously your chances are better given the slower speeds and lower mass of the airplane – but only better if you can find a nice field, which isn’t always an option (its virtually never and option in New England where I do most of my flying). And, more to the point, you really don’t have a choice in a standard 172 if you lose engine power; you are putting it down regardless of what’s under you.

Unlike most other aircraft, the Cirrus can keep you from ever having to worry about the condition of a field that looks lovely from above … because of the chute. Why not encourage its use to improve the chances of the aircraft occupants’ survival?

One last point on the parachute: it won’t save you in every situation but there are three scenarios where I think you are taking significant risks when flying in the 92% of GA single engine aircraft that don’t have a chute: flying at night, flying in IFR conditions, or both. I don’t care how good a pilot you are – your chances of survival are virtually nil in these scenarios if your engine quits. For this reason alone, the chute is fantastic safety innovation.

Cirrus Pilots Drive Up Insurance Rates For Everybody

This one is connected to the preceding topic. The “logic” in the aviation community is that when you pull the chute, the plane is totaled and the insurance company must write a big check, making insurance more expensive for everybody. While it’s true that higher accident rates in the general aviation community, as a whole, drive higher insurance rates, the idea that the Cirrus brand is uniquely responsible is silly. And that’s for a simple reason: if you fly a Cirrus, you pay higher rates because the hull value is greater than that of the majority of other general aviation, single engine aircraft (the same would be true for the owners of other more expensive planes as well). In essence, if you own a Cirrus, you are already paying more into the reserves of the insurance company in recognition of the fact that if you total your plane, you will draw on more of those reserves. Also note that to the extent that your insurance policy includes liability coverage for property damage, injury, or loss of life that you cause during a crash or incident, who do you think has a higher chance of needing to use that insurance and, if used, would have the higher claim? The person who’s plane floats down onto a house at 15 knots under a parachute? Or the person who’s plane plows in through a home’s bedroom window and starts a fire?

The Cirrus Can’t Recover From a Spin

This one is often used to “prove” that the plane is of poor design and comes from the fact that the procedure in a Cirrus if the plane enters a spin is to immediately pull the chute. Because of this, there’s an assumption that spin recovery is not possible “the normal way” (i.e., using the PARE technique – power off, ailerons neutralized, rudder full opposite of rotation, elevator forward). There’s a lot of noise on the internet about this but the long and short of it is that it appears that in the United States, the FAA allowed the SR series aircraft to be certified by showing that the chute was capable of saving the occupants of a plane in a spin, allowing the company to bypass a spin flight testing regime. But European authorities did not allow this and required spin testing of the aircraft which was reported to be normal in nature.

All that said, it’s hard to find any “official” information on this topic. One person claiming to be an engineer at Cirrus posted the following on an aviation discussion site: 

“Yes, CIRRUS has done spin testing in both the SR20 and the SR22, and we’ve done a variety of spins in both models. But that’s different than saying we’ve completed the entire spin matrix in each plane in every conceivable condition and configuration – because we haven’t. Eventually we decided to take the logical stand that spin prevention is the key to preventing needless fatalities and attempts to make the airplane spin-certified would just muddy the waters. Spin recovery requirements are very stringent. The upside of the cuffs [a design feature of the Cirrus wing] – that they give greater control in the slow flight regime – also have, like every aircraft feature, a compromise, and that is that they can cause an aircraft to take more than the required one-turn recovery rotation to be eligible to be spin-certified. But people should understand that even though an airplane may be spin certified, certain ‘cliffs,’ as we call them, can still exist in spin aerodynamics making recovery uncertain.”

While I have not spun a Cirrus, I’ve practices full stalls and agree with what many have said: it’s by far the most docile aircraft I’ve ever flown in the very slow flight leading up to a stall and, once stalled, it’s stability makes keeping the plane coordinated easier than other aircraft I’ve flown. The stall prevention features inherent in the design really do work.

A Final Thought

All aircraft have their benefits and downsides. And the competence (and incompetence) of the piloting community is equally distributed across all airframes. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you are critical of somebody’s skill simply based on what they fly or their decision to use a safety feature in an emergency, that says more about you than them. And I’m afraid, fellow aviator, it doesn’t really say anything good.