Pace - it seems to me to be your honourable quest to protect the innocent, in particular the 'eventually inevitable' unsupervised occupant of a parambulator, from a BRS pull.
Invoking concepts such as cowardice, shame and "excuse for a pilot" (not a new low for PPRuNE I suppose) might not be such an effective way for the skeptics to achieve that.
I sincerely hope we will not in future be debating how a language and climate of hostility toward anything but "wing gone" use of BRS may have negatively influenced a pilot of a BRS equipped aircraft - say on a perfectly legal arrival/departure over a populated area, flown in the same (reasonable) circumstances as non BRS a/c -who did not to pull when it all went pear-shaped for some reason, ending with an uncontrolled high velocity arrival, pall of rising thick black smoke and the much greater prospect of third parties being involved.
The reason why it went pear shaped will be investigated and debated, pull or no pull, but the consequences for many, hopefully all, involved would likely be significantly different in the pull case given the mass and slipperiness of an SR22.
It may be that we have moved or are moving from an initial period (post-introduction) where Rick could argue (115 fatalities) that BRS was not used enough when it should have been (likewise ejector seats post introduction) through lack of prior thought/drilling on BRS use, to a period where there might be some more drilling or awareness that leads to more pulls than might have been 'strictly' necessary according to some expectations. However even if true that at least would suggest that real world practice is/has swung away from the fatal end (under use) and we can go on learning about the subtleties and complexities which arise from the existence of such technology.
As hard as it was for Cirrus to get BRS certified (many said would never happen) the initial field experience was IMHO was harder "you can fit BRS but too many pilots are not using it and dying when things go wrong -Why o why is that?". It is not that they flew a dumb flight because they thought they had a BRS to bail them out. They never expected to be in an accident, had not considered BRS scenarios and were not primed to pull at all or in time when - somehow - it was needed.
The BRS debates do help to, rightly, also bring a focus on real world piloting skills and training, which even the airline industry has learned through AAF447 and Buffalo remains fundamental however much it has invested in automating flying skills (baby) and human error (bathwater) out of the airliner.
Skills and training can always be improved, but sadly not to the level of themselves totally obviating fatal accidents. In a world likely to become less and less tolerant of risk the ability of technology such as BRS to mitigate the dire consequences of failure(s) across the spectrum of human processess of training, skills, judgement, SA, physiology, psychology, engineering, meteorology, ..., becomes more precious over time. I know what 'black smoke' images I am relieved were not captured on mobile phones last week, whatever the prior circumstances. When those circumstances are understood maybe true aviation safety culture learning can be practiced and applied to the ultimate benefit of us all.
P.S. also known to fly Cessna, Piper and gliders. I suppose each of those gets me tarred with some brush or other too. More human-ness I guess. Human-ness happens, shall we try to improve on it? :-)
Last edited by execExpress; 12th Jun 2013 at 07:16.
Reason: Typo