Originally Posted by
Bell_ringer
With insurance rates soaring on 22’s I reckon Frank hopes the cadet gets more traction.
The running costs aren’t much more, it can accommodate more American-sized pilots and is just safer than the 22.
Some forgiveness is required in training environments. A smaller, less tolerant and less-crashworthy aircraft like the 22 doesn’t help.
While underpowered, the Cabri’s design is orders of magnitude safer than a 22.
For that premium you may as well also consider a cadet.
Well ridiculously high insurance rates are what clipped my self-fly-hire wings. Plus, given the "dumbing down" changes I've seen in the POH these past handful of years, I kinda wonder if Frank (or Kurt more likely) has been losing faith in the quality of flight instruction these days.
However, between 2003 and 2019 (my active rental years with four different schools) we only had three accidents. Two in the R22 (a bird strike and rear ending by an airplane on a night xc). Both pilots walked away from the resulting crash. The third was a fatal crash involving training in the R44.
During my training we had one accident. My instructor had a roll over in a 22 after his ppl student dumped the collective after a gust of wind. Not only did both of them walk away, but they were both back in the air within a week.
Its hard to imagine that any of these accidents would have ended differently had they been in a different helicopter.