Chuck
I really get conflicted emotions reading this stuff...for fifty five years I had deluded myself in the belief that having more than one engine on an airplane somehow gave me a better safety margin......
......now I read this and my emotions are difficult to describe thinking I had been wrong for all those years.
.. .. .. made me chuckle, guess I am with you on this one.
Unfortunately the USA does have a culture of suing if something happens
yep, as I said, had a bad day, look for someone to sue, or so I have been told in the States at least on four occasions by four different people!
Anyways, back to the issue .. .. ..
I guess we have stablished that there is no evidence a Cirrus will recover from a fully established spin, but there is no evidence it will not. In short we dont know either way. There is however evidence that it will almost certainly always recover form an incipient spin using standard recovery techniques.
Nearly all low level spins are fatal. The ability of the aircraft to recover or the deployment of a chute will not help you. Nearly all spins occur at low level.
Recovery from high level spins depend on the ability of the pilot and the aircraft to recover. I have suggested that many pilots would handle a first time spin badly, even if the aircraft was capable of recovering. One could conclude that if the average pilot has not recovered at the incipient stage his chances of survival in any aircraft are already compromised. Cirrus give another option IF conventional and demonstrated recoverability at the incipient stage has failed.
In so far as the chute is concerned there is limited evidence that the chute can result in severe injury due to a failure in deployment or due to the trauma on landing. However, the evidence is that these occurences have been extremelly rare.
We could conclude that the only relevant debate therefore is whether the chute is on balance an enhancement to safety or not.
To make that asessment we have to determine whether the chute has a record of saving more lives than would have been lost.
There is one further aspect. Whether the chute encourages pilots to put themselves in situations they would not otherwise do were it not for the chute.
For example, if you depart at night in a twin, even if you suffer an engine failure it is very unlikely you are going to meet with the ground again until you elect to do so. With a single, chute or not, if the engine fails you will meet the ground earlier than expected. That meeting does not carry with it a guarantee that you will escape uninjured - although the evidence would suggest your chances are reasonable.
Pilots are on the whole not fools. Life is about assessing risk. I know some pilots who would not fly a single over water in the winter without an immersion suit. They realise if they ditch their chances of survival are poor. They equally understand the risk of an engine failure is tiny. One pilot might consider a chute provides sufficient supplementary cover over the risk of an engine failure at night that whilst he wouldnt go without the chute, he would with it. Personally, that would be my assessment.
I think when that choice is taken away from us we should give up.
I also think we need to go on examining and questioning the evidence always. No one has yet come up with an aircraft that is completley safe - I think Cirrus may have a high performance single that is a little safer than most high performance singles in the hands of a well trained pilot.
I would be interested to know if your assessment is different.