Cor! talk about pick the bits out to make me look like a lummox
Sorry, I missed the "if it hadn't been for the......" bit
I don't know what all the fuss about the Cirrus is.....Anyone would think we were discussing the Titanic and not enough life boats. The BRS is
just one other option , it could save your life, who knows? I'd like one especially if the wing fell off. The BRS has never killed anyone - bad decisions kill people- but it has saved lives and that is a fact.
There are MANY planes out there not certified for spinning (the 747SP for one - which incidentally hit severe turbulence while the crew were not paying attention if I recall corectly), yet I'd still fly one. Aren't most PA28's, the most common training plane "not certified for spins"? What is the reason for this? It is clearly because someone thinks that if you spin one, you may die.
In 8 years of flying I have yet to a) unintentionally stall and b) inadvertently enter a spin. Even doing some messed up "aerobatics gone wrong" we still didn't spin. I do my best to avoid any unintential "outside of the flight regime" flight, which is what my training was all about. I'm pretty confident that should I be lucky enough to ever own a Cirrus, that I won't enter an unintenional spin.
Unfortunately the USA does have a culture of suing if something happens, mostly because the people who sue know that 9 times out of 10 the company being sued will settle out of court because if they don't they *could* stand to lose 10x that amount and it is not worth the risk or expense of going to court - hot coffee from MacDonalds springs to mind - incidentally at the same time as the "hot coffee" incident (7 mill?) a british chap sued Kellogs over a napalm-hot pop tart which burned him after it came out of the toaster. He won and was awarded £500.
Unfortunately this compensation culture is spreading to the UK fast. When selling shares one of the prospective buyers asked the question "who is responsible if I injure myself in the hangar".....We determined that he was not suitable for the group (in answer: you are).