Glad to see no one was seriously injured. Am I right in saying that this is the first incident with this aircraft where the parachute was deployed successfully? I remember a few months back another incidenet where the parachute failed to open forcing the pilot to make a safe emergency landing.

 

http://news.sky.com/story/1100224/plane-crashes-in-gloucestershire-back-garden

 

Cheers

 

Steve

Am I right in saying that this is the first incident with this aircraft where the parachute was deployed successfully?

Afraid not, CAPS has been deployed hundreds of times already on the SR22.

 

This story has also made BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-22798139 Aircraft parachuted in to Garden near Gloucester Airport

Steve,

 

If you're interested in US data, check out the link below, find the field that asks for "make", type in Cirrus and you'll get over 200 incidents/accidents. Under "events" there's a keyword field, type in "caps" and voila ;-)

 

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/index.aspx

 

Cheers,

Pete

Afraid not, CAPS has been deployed hundreds if not thousands of times already on the SR22.

Less than 50 CAPS events w/ 70 survivors.

 

To me... plainly obvious which is better (safer) to have... an aircraft floating down at less than 20kts vertical velocity (zero forward no wind) or flying / gliding at 60kts forward or faster at impact.

 

From BBC:

 

"We heard a big loud noise, [the plane] was spinning in the parachute and landed in the trees about 12ft away from us,"

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-22798139

Even with the CAPS though the SR-22 has an abysmal fatality rate. Since it's introduction in 2001 there have been 158 accidents of which 64 of them resulted in at least 1 fatality. That's a 41% fatality incident rate. Total fatalities were 123 fatalities. Which averages out to about 2 fatalities per incident. I compared that with the Cessna 172, which I think we can agree, there are many times more in operation than the SR-22 .  During the same time period, there have been 1773 accidents, of which 247 resulted in a death, which gives you only a 14% incident fatality rate.

Total fatalities were 492, which again averages out to 2 fatalities per incident.  Source from the NTSB database posted above,

I fly a Cirrus SR22 and I do think it's a challenging airplane to fly. In spite of all the safety features and neat avionics (which are very neat, BTW), its a very quick handling airplane and is particulary pitch sensitive. The avionics take some time to learn and need practice to stay current and proficient. All that being said, I enjoy flying it a lot and feel safer in it than I do in a Bonanza that I fly regularly. I've got a lot more time in the Bo and in some respects it's easier to fly but it doesn't have the redundancy the Cirrus has. And I gotta say, having that parachute is pretty nice if you really need it.

Another take on safety.

 

http://sr22.wordpress.com/2007/10/24/general-aviation-safety-and-the-cirrus-sr22/

Wait till one of them "parachute" down on a playground full of school children!

 

 

Wait till one of them "parachute" down on a playground full of school children!

 

I won't hold my breath.

 

 

 

 

Another take on safety.

 

Good read.

 

Another one:  http://www.stevewilsonblog.com/whats-wrong-with-cirrus-pilots-i-say-nothing/