Aircraft lands in Cheltenham garden

[sdbeach]

Originally Posted by A and C

I think that what you and I are saying has more to do with illustrating that we live in two country's divided by a common language rather than any real difference in opinion on the use of the chute.

I agree with you -- and not some others!

Because of the influence of skeptical opinions and premature judgments, we believe that Cirrus pilots fail to take seriously the differences.

As I stated on the Flyer forum, "70 people lived and 115 people died in Cirrus aircraft based on the difference of a pilot's actions." Those were in situations eerily similar, such as spatial disorientation, where one pilot pulled the handle and all survived while another pilot attempted to recover and people died. Add them up and you get big numbers. That motivates continued vigilance and effort to encourage Cirrus pilots to fly safely.

Cheers
Rick

[mad_jock]

Note: this rate has increased over the past decade, contrary to conventional wisdom that the GA fatal accident rate has been steady and resistant to change. It got worse!)

That says to me that the quality of pilots has gone down.

So instead of bring the quality up you put a tech fix in.

Which will lead to the quality going down again and so it will be a viscous circle.

But you have fiddled the figures by removing a section of the results. Your numbers are still above the sectors levels.

Maybe the reason why the fatalities are lower in the instructional and commercial side of things is because the pilots know what the hell they are doing.

[sdbeach]

Originally Posted by mad_jock

Note: this rate has increased over the past decade, contrary to conventional wisdom that the GA fatal accident rate has been steady and resistant to change. It got worse!)

That says to me that the quality of pilots has gone down.

So instead of bring the quality up you put a tech fix in.

Which will lead to the quality going down again and so it will be a viscous circle.

Good grief. Of course, we are in a viscous circle. Consequently, general aviation needs to both attract more people to flying and keep them from killing themselves!

What's the motivation to get better? Criticism and ridicule won't do it. Taking away the toys won't do it. Just ask your rebellious teenagers.

I'm convinced that we need to establish a culture of safety that encourages safe practices. Note the word encourages. Note the word culture.

Frankly, the culture of PPRuNe sucks. Disparaging remarks seem tolerated and taken for a badge of honor. Not likely to fix things.

Cheers
Rick

[mad_jock]

If you put the same effort into trying to get exercise 3-13 taught properly in the PPL syllabus as you do convincing people to buy a plane with chute you would save a whole heap more lives than your doing now.

Your trying to treat the symptoms currently, not cure the disease.

I'm convinced that we need to establish a culture of safety that encourages safe practices. Note the word encourages. Note the word culture.

yep focus on your pilots being able to fly straight and level without any automatics in.

Make them learn how to attitude fly.

Know the danger attitudes and how to get away from them.

Make them be able to fly without all the boxes of tricks doing half the work for them.

Do PIC courses and planning courses, met courses.

Oh a get them to look out the window and have some sort of clue about what's around them and what there options are at any given moment of the flight.

Then test them every twelve months to get them to step up there game at least once per year so they at least practise the black art of flying with nothing working.

Do that and your 115 will be a small fraction of the lives you will save.

[007helicopter]

But you have fiddled the figures by removing a section of the results. Your numbers are still above the sectors levels.

Maybe the reason why the fatalities are lower in the instructional and commercial side of things is because the pilots know what the hell they are doing.

MJ Your comments while sometimes controversial and critical do at least promote debate.

Where has SDbeach fiddled the figures? - I believe they are presented factually and accurately, he is not trying to promote the Cirrus aircraft being better by skewing figures but present facts that encourage Cirrus pilots to take safety much more seriously and raise awareness of the chute as an option that can be trained for and used properly.

You seem very much against any technical advancement or innovation with GA.

[mad_jock]

No I am not actually

To be honest engines would be my first port of call.


They have fiddled with the figures because they have removed a chunk of experience by saying that instruction flights and commercial are removed because that then lowers the national averages for that sector.

It looks pretty good when you take them out but then you think that the rest of that sector are 25-30 year old aircraft with corrosion issues and engines past TBO. And you want to compare them with less than 10 year old new ones.

So get the figures for similar production dates and compare like with like. They more than likely have, and have seen that there isn't much difference statistically between the two groups because if there was you can be sure as hell they would have it in the marketing. And they would be pushing the FAA to make a chute standard in that class of aircraft.

[sdbeach]

Originally Posted by mad_jock

If you put the same effort into trying to get exercise 3-13 taught properly in the PPL syllabus as you do convincing people to buy a plane with chute you would save a whole heap more lives than your doing now.

Let's be clear about my personal motivations. I gain nothing from people buying a Cirrus. I believe in the safety innovations inherent in the fleet of aircraft that I own and fly. I rebut misinformation and misunderstandings when aware of them. I spend my energy in helping those who have decided to fly a Cirrus and to do so safely.

Originally Posted by mad_jock

Your trying to treat the symptoms currently, not cure the disease.

Welcome to the freedoms of general aviation, where there is neither the economic incentive to keep your pilot job nor the oversight found in commercial or military flying. So, what do you do, eh?

Originally Posted by mad_jock

I'm convinced that we need to establish a culture of safety that encourages safe practices. Note the word encourages. Note the word culture.

yep focus on your pilots being able to fly straight and level without any automatics in.
Make them learn how to attitude fly.
Know the danger attitudes and how to get away from them.
Make them be able to fly without all the boxes of tricks doing half the work for them.
Do PIC courses and planning courses, met courses.
Oh a get them to look out the window and have some sort of clue about what's around them and what there options are at any given moment of the flight.
Then test them every twelve months to get them to step up there game at least once per year so they at least practise the black art of flying with nothing working.
Do that and your 115 will be a small fraction of the lives you will save.

Interesting list of suggestions.

For the record, the Cirrus Pilot Proficiency Program (CPPP) does all of that recurrent training -- except for the testing part, which is left to the regulators. A CPPP provides 15 hours of Cirrus-specific ground instruction and 6 hours of flight instruction in a weekend event. The ground courses cover safety statistics review, procedures review, avionics, weather, engine management, risk assessment, CAPS decision-making, aviation survival, and maintenance familiarization. COPA runs about 12-15 CPPP events around the world each year in the US, England, France, Germany, Australia and recently in Brazil. About 300 to 400 pilots attend each year. We hire some of the most experienced Cirrus instructors in the world, most with more than 2,000 hours dual given and some with over 8,000 hours dual given in a Cirrus.

MJ, it's all part of a concerted effort to improve our culture of safety. See the COPA Code of Conduct for more details about what we value.

Your ideas are good ones. The need is there. The challenge is to encourage pilots to behave differently. Note the word encourage, as most Cirrus pilots have the freedom to fly badly.

Cheers
Rick

[007helicopter]

Rick

At this stage is there any more known about the Pilot in this incident, hours in type , what transition training etc?

In my early 50's I must admit it has taken me a while to get to a reasonable level on the avionics and I have invested quite a few additional hours of training to get to that point.

I imagine generally speaking it is going to a handful for your "average" pilot in his mid seventies to get truly up to speed on the whole set up.

[mad_jock]

Rick get proper data that actually means something.

Like with like.

Then maybe you will convince some of us who think that the chute is causing incidents due to pilots getting themselves into situation that they had no right to be near.

At the moment as far as I am concerned your accident rate is above that of 20-30 year auld heaps why?

Once you know that reason you can start with the chute is brilliant talk.

[Pace]

THBorchert

To me, the very, very, very low probability of even hitting someone on the ground under parachute, let alone injuring them, means that I will not be concerned with it when compared to considering my own life as being directly and immediately threatened. Because that is the situation the pilot is in when he/she pulls the chute. For him/her, in that situation, of course there is "no alternative". What else? No

I really cannot believe this statement! We do have a responsibility to people on the ground !
Parachutes have been around for a long time strapped to a pilots back! In the war the pilot bailed out of a stricken aircraft they didn't say I don't like the sound of my engine so I am out of here! Neither in that situation do I think they would have bailed out over central London ??
The Cirrus has opened up a whole new debate because we are talking about lowering a whole aircraft to the ground and not just a stricken one but a healthy aircraft and sorry but if a pilot looses a healthy aircraft on instruments he should not be there!
Better he spends money on honing his instrument flying and recovery from unusual attitudes!
While I appreciate over a built up area pulling the chute in a stricken aircraft which is going down regardless or even where the pilot is about to pass out as the that action is the better of two evils!
No one on the ground has yet been killed by a descending aircraft descending at 25 mph on top of someone but that is pure luck!
In this last incidence the police made a statement of how lucky it was that the aircraft crashed where it did! The police stated that in other areas Many could have been killed or injured!
Yet you know better ??? I predict at some point we will be discussing loss of life by such an aircraft descending into a highly populated area!
I hope it's not you as how could you live with that on your conscience especially if you had a flying aircraft at your control !
If a pilot suffered a heart attack at 2000 feet above a built up area and pulled the chute that is the lesser of two evils!
If a pilot had engine failure at 2000 feet above a built up area and pulled the chute killing people on the ground I would have him charged with manslaughter

Pace

[Big Pistons Forever]

Rick

Is there any data comparing the accident rate of those pilots who have done the full COPA/Cirrus training program over those who have not ?

Originally Posted by Pace

No one on the ground has yet been killed by a descending aircraft descending at 25 mph on top of someone but that is pure luck!


Pace

So this is preferable ?

[sdbeach]

Originally Posted by mad_jock

Rick get proper data that actually means something.

Like with like.

Then maybe you will convince some of us who think that the chute is causing incidents due to pilots getting themselves into situation that they had no right to be near.

I doubt it!

Doesn't seem like any data or logic would convince Cirrus skeptics. My hope is that the many other readers will form their own opinions.

Anyway, not my job, nor my interest. No other manufacturer than Cirrus releases reliability engineering data. Take that as a clue.

Originally Posted by Big Pistons Forever

Is there any data comparing the accident rate of those pilots who have done the full COPA/Cirrus training program over those who have not ?

No rate data, just frequency data. We don't know how much flying is done by what portion of pilots.

However, the frequency is pretty startling.

We know that there are about 5400 aircraft produced. We currently have 3600 members of COPA of whom about 3200 are pilots who tell us they fly Cirrus aircraft. Based on various informed estimates, we think there are about 7,000 active pilots who fly Cirrus aircraft including training centers, rental operations, flying clubs, and university training academies.

So, figure about 1/2 of active Cirrus pilots are members of COPA.

If pilots were uniformly distributed, then we would expect about 1/2 of the fatal accidents to be COPA members.

Yet, of the 96 fatal accidents over the lifetime of the fleet, 24 or 25% were COPA members and 10 or 10% were active in COPA recurrent training programs. In the past 18 months, 3 of 12 fatal accident pilots were COPA members (25%), and the year before 3 of 16 fatal accidents were COPA members (19%).

So, instead of expecting 1/2, we actually see 1/4 of the fatal accidents involve COPA members and 1/10 involve active participants.

As for rate data, we wish we had that because we speculate that COPA members fly a lot more than non-COPA members, which would make the comparisons more favorable.

Participation seems to matter.

Originally Posted by 007helicopter

At this stage is there any more known about the Pilot in this incident, hours in type , what transition training etc?

No.

But those are excellent questions that I have requested be investigated by the AAIB.

Originally Posted by Pace

If a pilot had engine failure at 2000 feet above a built up area and pulled the chute killing people on the ground I would have him charged with manslaughter

Do you recall people being killed on the ground due to a plane crash? Ever? Anywhere?

Was the pilot charged with manslaughter? Or did they die too?

Cheers
Rick

[Pace]

BPF

I do not see the relevance of that picture to this argument? Other than placing an emotive picture!
I am talking about engine failure where an aircraft has altitude to glide clear or glide to a better place.
Obviously if the aircraft is stricken and going down pull the chute built up area or not as an out of control aircraft descending into a built up area will do far more damage than one under a chute.
But IMO there is risk to people on the ground and to blindly pull te chute in an engine failure situation is negligence

Pace

[thborchert]

Pace,

We are moving in circles. We also encounter problems with reading comprehension skills. Probably mutual. Lets give it up.

Mad-jock,

You are raising interesting points:

-Do you really think more regulation in training would help? Even more than we have now? What percentage of GA accidents do not involve broken rules as it stands today? Rules don't keep people from being stupid.

- As Rick says, it is important to differentiate professional and recreational flying. Professional flying is highly regulated in the way you seem to prefer (doesn't prevent stuff like Air France, either - see a pattern in human behavior that fundamentally prevents more training/regulation/selection to work?). Recreational flying involves a degree of freedom that most parts of our society value quite highly. That may include the freedom of being stupid enough to kill yourself. And it may involve the freedom of putting others at risk. Since there is no such thing as "risk-free", our society has decided to value freedom higher than certain risks. I, for one, prefer that - and I am very worried by the current trend moving in the other direction. Especially since humans are so bad at evaluating and weighing risk -as this thread so impressively demonstrates.

[mad_jock]

Doesn't seem like any data or logic would convince Cirrus skeptics

Oh it really would I promise you.


But I really suspect that it wont prove what you want it to. So you will avoid providing it. Come hell or high water.

There is no logic in the academic sense with your statements so far. Mainly because you have set out with the purpose of proving what you think is correct and fiddling the data to make it fit.

We can do anything with data we like.

there has been 130 airframes involved in incidents out of 5400. Which gives a 2.5% hit rate. That doesn't prove anything. But if there was a public transport machine with 2.5% hull lose in a fleet over 10 years there would be major questions being asked about the pilot training and the design.

Aviation is always fiddling the data, airlines would have us believe that its the safest form of transport. But once your in you find out everything is done by the mile and if you did it by the hour you get a completely different outcome and by the sector its not that great to be honest but not as bad as riding a motorcycle.

So come on then like for like aircraft up to 10 years old and include all that are single engine up to 5700kg. At the moment the auld heaps have a better safety record.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Do you recall people being killed on the ground due to a plane crash? Ever? Anywhere?

Lockerbie is the most often quoted most recent UK example (don't know whether that's accurate or not). The Concorde wasn't in the UK of course.

(Not counting "participants," ie people on the ground who were involved with the flying operations.)

[sdbeach]

Originally Posted by mad_jock

Doesn't seem like any data or logic would convince Cirrus skeptics

Oh it really would I promise you.

Glad to hear you say that ... until I read the rest of your post!

Originally Posted by mad_jock

But I really suspect that it wont prove what you want it to. So you will avoid providing it. Come hell or high water.

No avoidance on my part. Just no data on anyone's part. You ask for reasonable data but do you know where to find it? I don't.

Originally Posted by mad_jock

There is no logic in the academic sense with your statements so far. Mainly because you have set out with the purpose of proving what you think is correct and fiddling the data to make it fit.

Ouch! And to think I had a successful research career before taking up aviation. Of course, you didn't know that, but disrespectful potshots are easy, eh?

Originally Posted by mad_jock

So come on then like for like aircraft up to 10 years old and include all that are single engine up to 5700kg. At the moment the auld heaps have a better safety record.

Please state your comparative numbers? You seem to know how to calculate the data to prove your point. What is it?

Cheers
Rick

[sdbeach]

Originally Posted by Gertrude the Wombat

Lockerbie is the most often quoted most recent UK example (don't know whether that's accurate or not). The Concorde wasn't in the UK of course.

Both are transport aviation accidents. Got examples of general aviation accidents? That's the context for this discussion.

Cheers
Rick

[Big Pistons Forever]

Originally Posted by mad_jock

There is no logic in the academic sense with your statements so far. Mainly because you have set out with the purpose of proving what you think is correct and fiddling the data to make it fit.

We can do anything with data we like.

.

I would say the argument goes both ways. I don't think any data will change your mind based on what you have posted.

I think both COPA and Cirrus are doing more than any other manufacturer to use an evidence based methodology to shape their training programs to better prepare Cirrus pilots.

The fact that their program doesn't fit the conventional training orthodoxy seems to offend many who post here. So for example despite overwhelmning evidence that in the real world pilots don't often fare very well conducting forced landings the chute is the problem not part of a solution.

Even more nonsensical is the snide comments by several posters about a lack of spin training in the Cirrus training program. The accident record here is also clear, virtually all spin accidents happen so close to the ground recovery is unlikely even if the proper inputs are used.

But really lets think about this for a bit. Bloggins lets the airplane inadvertently get into slow flight and does nothing about it and then inadvertently lets it stall and does nothing about it and then lets the airplane yaw and does nothing about it and so now that he was stupid times three he will suddenly leap into action and recognize the spin and put the proper control actions in the proper order and recover. Yup wouldn't want to concentrate on recognizing and recovering from a developing situation that will lead to a potential stall. Much better to spend a lot of time teaching a skill which almost always won't save you anyway

The Cirrus training program places all the emphasis on where it matters, recognizing and recovering from the developing bad situation before the aircraft gets close to stalling. That is what I mean by evidence based training over uninformed feelings and mindless repetition of "that's the way we always trained".


The sad part is the fact that there are so many Cirrus pilots that don't take the training, and they seem to be the ones who are having the accidents.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

That's the context for this discussion.

Sure, and I don't have any such examples[1], but that wasn't what you asked.

[1] There are some, of course, involving people related to the aviation activity, but I guessed, although you didn't say so, that you meant to ask only about people on the ground who had nothing to do with what was going on in the air.