He didn’t follow it rigorously 
Their reasons for belittling the system, and the pilots who use it may owe more to psychology than aviation.
That is not a discussion. That is merely somebody avoiding having to do some typing, by turning it into a “personal” issue. It isn’t personal. I have no investment in this arena and neither have most others who asked questions. FWIW, I could write a cheque for an SR22 today.
Why not, for example, pick up the points made above. Why so many recent pulls show no data?
Why some engine failures are presented as verified, while most others are presented as “reported”? Nobody has suggested that pulling the chute due to empty tanks is less valid than pulling it due to the engine having failed.
Pilot-H wrote:
follow the advice in the POH
Absolutely! Best advice in this thread. Don’t listen to people who are allergic against chutes. Don’t listen to people who invested money in Cirrus labels and now need to make a return on investment. Don’t listen to people who invested into Cirrus planes and now need to protect their investment.
The POH is the binding document that every pilot should know and respect. Read the POH, understand it and consider it carefully in your decision making.
So let’s have a look in the POH (quoted from official SR20 POH for serial numbers 1268 and up – as I only have the German version back from my Cirrus flying I’m translating back to English so the wording in the English version can differ) – the relevant chapter are “emergency procedures”.
Under “CAPS deplyoment” one can read: “Cases for deployment of CAPS are e.g. midair collisions, structural failure, loss of control, dangerous terrain, pilot incapitation”
Under “Emergency landing – Engine failure” one can read “If all tries to restart failed, you should select a suitable field and prepare for landing …”
1. Establish best glide
2. Radio – mayday
3. Transponder – 7700
4. ELT – aktivste
5. Power – close
…
As everyone can read: The POH procedure for an engine failure is an off airfield landing. CAPS according to POH should only be applied if the terrain to land is “dangerous”.
As Pilot-H wrote: Read the POH and act accordingly. An engine out emergency is not a good time to demonstrate you are more clever than the POH!
First of all, great that you made the effort to go through that list, and come to some conclusions – which is a lot more than others here have done.
I one thing a bit problematic, though – that you put
turn off the AP, push the stick forward, fly the plane
or similar after a few loss of control items. Fortunately, you do not take the same attitude (“just dead-stick it into a field, you wimp!”) to the engine failures, but there is a common theme: Real Pilot’s don’t screw up, and if they do, they dig themselves out. I think that this is the psychological factor causing so much dissent about the parachute.
But real life is different. Real pilots do screw up. I don’t fancy the chances of someone who has demonstrated inferior skills by losing control to suddenly develop the superior skills required to recover from that. And any instructor can tell you how well the average pilot does every year when they have to demonstrate an emergency landing after an engine failure – a large proportion would not live to tell the tale if it happened for real.
So of course I would expect a significant proportion of parachute deployments to follow displays of muppetry. And there will also be those where the pull was entirely unnecessary – because pilots make mistakes.
But at least they are alive to learn from them…
Peter wrote:
OK
Perhaps a little judgemental Peter. Re #45, having spoken to people who knew the Pilot well, he really did lose control. Of course he shouldn’t have but equally not sure you can criticise the use of the the chute in that case.
I agree with you Cobalt.
An “autopilot induced stall” is initially a stall warner, then a proper stall, then (on the SR22) a rapid wing drop, and eventually probably a spin. There is no question that on a spinning plane I would pull the chute if I had one. But not just on an “autopilot induced stall” which is basically somebody having their IAS bleed off during a climb (which on an SR22, 300HP, would be pretty high up) and then you have plenty of time to deal with it. I have had loads of high altitude stalls… the stall warner gets your attention very fast. Did these pilots not have training on type? One doesn’t do much autopilot-anything in the basic PPL.
I then come back to the casual nature of many of the reports, or the total lack of data in many from recent years. The thread I see running through all these (admittedly brief) accident summaries is that so much of it seems “reported”. I am sure there is more detail in the NTSB etc reports, but sometimes the details are known e.g.
CAPS event #45, 6 June 2013, near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom (CAPS Save #34 )
1 minor injury; Factors: pilot reported “navigational difficulties” while on approach to Cheltenham airport when ATC changed runways and vectored the aircraft to a different approach; Activation: approximately 2000 feet; Weather: IMC; Landing: garden in a residential area of urban city
and this makes one wonder about how much of the others are as informative as they appear.
While the details (“navigational difficulties”) are nonsense (that was the rumor at the time, but it turned out to be the pilot fighting the Autopilot for a while and then losing control after taking over), it was a loss of control in IMC accident which that wording implies
While the details (“navigational difficulties”) are nonsense (that was the rumor at the time
Hence I wonder how much else is “pilot reported”. I would bet a lot of the “reported” engine related stuff is empty tanks.
Pulling the chute is equally valid (the engine has stopped) but the amount of fresh air in a fuel tank is dramatically more pilot controllable than the engine not blowing up (especially given the SR22’s great range, relative to the typical mission profile) so if this were indeed the case, the conclusion would be that the value of the chute is overstated in many of the reports.
Now, why would anyone want to do that?
Peter wrote:
Pulling the chute is equally valid (the engine has stopped) but the amount of fresh air in a fuel tank is dramatically more pilot controllable than the engine not blowing up (especially given the SR22’s great range, relative to the typical mission profile) so if this were indeed the case, the conclusion would be that the value of the chute is overstated in many of the reports.Now, why would anyone want to do that?
Peter, aren’t almost all of these subject to NTSB or AAIB etc accident reports? You don’t believe they are compromised surely?
when the admin can cast aspersions about the qualifications of the pilot?
Steve, this has been done to death many times. EuroGA doesn’t carry advertising, so we cannot afford to employ a full time (and generally anonymous) moderator. Anyway, in Europe, ads would not raise that sort of money, especially as the main GA countries have their own sites, usually unmoderated so great for beating people up.
There are many forums out there which have a participating mod.
If you want to donate say €30k a year, I will be very happy to employ somebody who you won’t be able to throw bricks at. Do you think modding is a full time fun job?
Another pilot from down your neck of the woods also hated the idea of a participating mod. That chappy could easily afford the 30k and I suggested that to him. For some totally obscure reason he declined 
So you have a forum run by somebody who at least knows one end of a plane from the other, which should be seen as generally beneficial to moderation policy. Especially with some people skirting really close to the edges.
Except when it comes to running EuroGA (which is definitely my job) my opinion is worth no more than anybody else’s. It’s a discussion…
Because the final text of your post contained a number of personal attacks, Steve, it has been deleted. I am travelling and it is too complicated to edit, and editing is a dodgy thing at the best of times. I am sending you the original text by PM so if you want to repost it, minus the personal attacks, you won’t need to type it all up again. You won’t get that level of service on any other forum
Peter, aren’t almost all of these subject to NTSB or AAIB etc accident reports? You don’t believe they are compromised surely?
Indeed they must be, but it doesn’t appear that the summaries were generated from the NTSB reports.
