• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • Contact

Golf Hotel Whiskey

Golf Hotel Whiskey: for pilots and aviation enthusiasts

Surprising facts about accidents involving Cirrus aircraft

For any reader who owns or flies a Cirrus, the latest issue of Cirrus Pilot, the membership magazine for the Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association (COPA), is a must read. In the issue, Cirrus owner and pilot Rick Beach has compiled years of knowledge and research into SR20/SR22 accidents to come up with a number of surprising conclusions as to what causes accidents involving Cirrus aircraft. 

In fact and as Dave Hirschman recently noted in a post about the issue on the AOPA Pilot Blog, you might also be surprised to learn that:

“Only two pilots in a Cirrus fatal accident had less than 150 hours total time,” Beach said. “One of them was (the late New York Yankees pitcher) Cory Lidle, who had an instructor in the right seat during the accident.” (The other took place off the coast of France under unknown conditions.) Pilots with more than 400 hours total time accounted for 33 of 44 fatal Cirrus accidents where pilot experience was reported.

Moreover, Dave noted:

“All but one of the 37 probable causes determined by NTSB accident investigations lists pilot causes,” Beach found. Adverse weather was a factor in most Cirrus accidents, and weather-related accidents are most common in the October-through-March time frame….

…During the same period, there were 55 fatal Cirrus accidents where the airframe parachute wasn’t deployed. In examining those scenarios, Beach estimates more than half (30) had “a high or good probability of success if the pilot would have pulled the (parachute) handle.”

In other words, continuous learning and training, a more conservative take on the weather and not being afraid to pull the parachute in an emergency can greatly improve the odds of avoiding a fatal accident.

Beach’s report is a must read and can be downloaded for free from the COPA website by clicking here.

Cirrus Safety

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Sylvia says

    December 18, 2009 at 16:56

    That is interesting! I'm amazed at the lean towards higher-houred pilots. Are they getting blas

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Matthew Stibbe
Matthew Stibbe is CEO of Articulate Marketing and Turbine, the easy, online way to deal with office paperwork. He has an FAA CPL/IR and an EASA PPL/IR and sometimes flies a Cirrus SR-22. He also writes about wine at Vincarta and being a better manager at Geek Boss.
Bureaucracy must die eBook
Subscribe via RSS

Recent Posts

  • IATA Airport Abbreviations
  • Upcoming Concorde and Apollo documentaries
  • Lie Back And Think Of England: London To Austin On BA’s New 787 Dreamliner
  • Video: Parachuting from the edge of space
  • Hilarious preflight safety video for GA aircraft
  • San Francisco Airport at night – beautiful time lapse video
  • A practical jetpack (finally) takes off
  • A man in a hot air balloon realises he is lost
  • Pegasus House: The former HQ of the Bristol Aeroplane Company is restored
  • Vintage British aviation posters from the 1920-1930s

Copyright © 2023 Golf Hotel Whiskey. All rights reserved.