Reply #7: Accidents happen, but a Cirrus like a bad choice for a new pilot. [View All]

[lectrobyte]

Seems kind of like giving a Corvette to a new driver.

http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/cirrus-sr20

excerpting a bit:

Cirrus has marketed its airplanes to generic rich guys (i.e., nonpilots) with ads in generic rich guy magazines, a strategy that Beech, Cessna, and Piper pursued in the 1970s but gave up when airplanes went out of mass production and yuppies decided that flying themselves around was too dangerous. Cirrus's advertising stresses the enhanced safety provided by the airframe parachute and the computer screens showing the airplane's position relative to airports, mountains, weather, etc. The combination of novice pilots and a fast airplane has resulted in a mournful accident record that is reflected in high insurance rates and recurrent training requirements similar to what you'd find on a twin-engine plane or pressurized single.
If the engine were to quit over water or the mountains at night, the parachute would be a nice feature indeed. However, mechanical failures are not a very common cause of small airplane crashes, and the Cirrus has some features, to be discussed in this review, that make it more prone to pilot-induced crashes than a Diamond or Cessna.

Aside from the parachute, the Cirrus has a fair number of pro-safety features: (1) modern 26G safety cockpit, (2) angled firewall on the G2 models (introduced Fall 2004) to encourage skidding rather than crunching on a nose-first landing, (3) four-point seatbelts, (4) good visibility, (5) highly redundant electrical supply.

In terms of avoiding an accident, one problem with the Cirrus is its unforgiving handling compared to other basic four-seaters. The plane is harder to keep level with rudders in a stall than a Cessna or Diamond; if in a deep uncoordinated stall, the Cirrus wants to drop a wing and go into a spin. Thanks to a "split-airfoil" wing design, in which the inner portion of the wing has a higher angle of attack than the outer portion, the Cirrus gives more of a stall buffet warning than many airplanes. The outer portion of the wings, which are in front of the ailerons, are still flying and permitting the pilot to control roll with the yoke, even as the inner sections of the wings may be stalled and creating a warning buffet. This illustrates one of the advantages of composite construction; you could build a metal wing like this, but it would be very costly. For pilots accustomed to learning about an impending stall by feeling reduced airloads on the flight controls, the Cirrus provides much less stall warning. This is due to spring cartridges that continue to resist flight control movement even when the airplane is not moving. In other words, the flight controls feel similar whether you're flying or stalled.