Ok apologies for writing excuse for a pilot ! Firstly I am totally for the Cirrus and its chute but certain areas of iits use bother me and the chute should be there to compliment basic handling skills and not to be a substitute for those handling skills ! Sorry for offending anyone
Pace
To be fair, I think that this is something that Cirrus and COPA are trying to do.
My VFR Cirrus Transition Training (with a factory syllabus and standardised instruction) took me 11.3 flight hours, at least the same in "ground hours" and 34 landings and was much harder and more rigorous than my FAA PPL oral and checkride. I was a materially better pilot after the course than before it but still obviously a new pilot.
My left forearm hurt at the end of each day. There was some "buttonology" but the emphasis was certainly on hand flying with particular emphasis on very precise speed and energy management.
I will take the annual currency training structured by Cirrus as well.
The COPA sponsored CPPP ground courses are also very good (I haven't done the flying part of a CPPP yet). I am working on my FAA IR at the moment. The two weather courses that I took at a CPPP were much more in depth than the weather material required for the FAA IR written. The fact that one can get every weather question wrong on the FAA IR written scares me.
Risk homeostasis is a factor that ought to be more explicitly addressed in Cirrus / COPA training without diluting the message that people should pull when they need to but should try minimise the need.
The factory offers a decentralised, standardised, appropriately scaled approximation of a type rating and currency training. COPA offers advanced courses with respect to weather, avionics, powerplants, decision making etc.
It is up to pilots to take advantage of all of the training opportunities available.