Autoland feature

[andrej]

This is very interesting and seems to be great way to safely recover from various emergencies.
Just need a Garmin G3000 avionics and auto-throttle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcVuubU4BTU

Cheers,

[Jeroen D]

It is pretty amazing. Love the Cirrus plane. Although it seems to be mostly a Garmin development they have integrated into their latest jet.

I did most of piloting on the propellor variant SR20/SR22, whilst we still lived in the USA. ( and a few hours in Europe).

My wife was not to keen on my flying. According to her "all these little planes crash all the time". Not completely true, but still a lot of accidents. So I told her I would only fly Cirrus with its standard Ballistic parachute. Which gave her a lot of piece of mind. I did not tell her the hourly cost of the Cirrus was 4-5 times as high as the little Cessna's I used to fly!

[andrej]

Jeroen,
nice story! I am sure that your wife, was glad to know that the SR20/SR22 had extra safety feature. The additional costs makes it worth while.

Cheers,

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

And then you get the stories that the chute was an FAA requirement because the thing had the tendency to flat spin with no recovery option   :-P

[Jeroen D]

And then you get the stories that the chute was an FAA requirement because the thing had the tendency to flat spin with no recovery option   :-P

From Wiki:

Cirrus designed a special kind of "spin resistant" wing (or leading edge cuff), which makes it more difficult for the plane to enter a spin, and thus, more difficult to recover from one. The FAA accepted the parachute as a sufficient mode of spin recovery and complete spin testing was not required

.

Spin recovery training has been scrapped from pilot's training many decades ago. More pilots died during training than in actual spins. So it remains to be seen how many pilots on any plane would be able to recover from true spins.

Making sure you recognise a stall and proper stall recovery (i.e. preventing you do not get anywhere near a stall/spin condition is much easier and effective.


Here an interesting interview with a Cirrus designer which shed some more light on their approach to stalls and spins

http://www.kineticlearning.com/pilots_world/safety/06_05/article_06_03.html

[United744]

The SR-22 tends to flat-spin, which is unrecoverable I think always (regardless of aircraft type it occurs to), and Cirrus wanted to avoid a bad rep so fitted the spin recovery chute.

I fly gliders and spin for fun. Yes, it's "higher risk" compared to other maneuvers, but as always, know your aircraft and its limitations, and ensure you start with plenty of altitude!

A proper spin, if conducted with plenty of margin (altitude) is as safe as anything else. If you choose to spin an aircraft with more questionable spin tendency (i.e. one where flat spin is likely or recovery is questionable) then check you are wearing a chute. Some aircraft can take many rotations to slow enough to recover, and thus eat a lot of altitude in the recovery.

There are plenty of videos on YouTube of aircraft that were spun starting at a few thousand feet and were spinning all the way to impact, because they had either a poor CoG making recovery impossible, or they started the spin with insufficient altitude to recover.

As always, if you decide to do very risky things, you choose to accept the consequences.

IMHO, the reason the pseudo-ban on spin training appeared is because the aircraft being spun were not well understood/not permitted to spin in the first place, the recovery techniques used were poor or poorly executed, and recovery highly questionable from a spin situation (depending on aircraft type).

The Puchacz has a reputation for entering inadvertent spins, but I think it is more honest to say it was perhaps not being handled correctly at the time. Some aircraft can handle being badly flown without serious incident, while others bite. A case of "blaming the tool" rather than the operator.

https://members.gliding.co.uk/bga-safety-management/stall-and-spin-avoidance/

I hate automation - it means people lose skills (yes, I'm aware it also increases safety) - but I do think this emergency auto-land is a great innovation.

Now to just persuade single-pilots to wear oxygen at altitude ALL THE TIME. Too many bizjets and higher-end pistons and turboprops have been lost to hypoxia.

[Jeroen D]

Now to just persuade single-pilots to wear oxygen at altitude ALL THE TIME. Too many bizjets and higher-end pistons and turboprops have been lost to hypoxia.

Very true! The FAA high altitude endorsement is (if I recall correctly) for pressurised planes only above 25.000 feet.

A Cirrus 22 Turbo has a ceiling of 25.000 feet and no pressurised cabin.

I was taught to put on oxygen passing through 10.000 feet no matter what. Well below the legal threshold, but if you are climbing and get caught doing other things, you might forget. It is not as if you will pass out immediately, but as you continue to climb it might start to affect you, even if marginally.

I have driven in the Himalayas on roads at around 15-16.000 feet. You can still breath normally, but as soon as you start moving around it becomes noticeable very quickly. Also, some people get altitude sickness very quickly.

Once when we lived in Kansas City, we drove to Breckenridge in the Rockies. About 10-11.000 feet. One of our sons got altitude sickness even before we arrived. Headache, feeling sick etc.

Jeroen