Renting Cirrus insurance requirements ???
 

I have been looking at renting hours on a Cirrus aircraft and found one an SR20 which sounded good value regarding monthly and especially hourly rates.
All looked good until I was told that regardless of experience there was a dual 10 hour requirement before you could fly off on your own.

This is crazy as 10 hrs is 1/4 of a complete PPL course and you can get a far more complex jet full type rating for far less.

I have an ATP and 5000 hrs 3000 in an array of piston twins and singles and the rest in turbine /jet aircraft. So no novice!!!

At one time I used to fly aircraft where I was thrown a set of keys and told to take that! Piston singles which I had never flown before and complex too!

Working it out just the conversion eats up £2000 and I sense a rip off under the excuse of "not our fault guv blame the insurance"!!!

A checkout on any single should be whatever it takes. I would be surprised if I would need more than a couple of hours at most and would happily take any single piston with a look at the manual and that is it.

Is this a rip off or just standard insurance generated practice as I was told ?
It took NO consideration of experience or hours flown?

Regardless any ideas on a sensible price Cirrus with a sensible checkout requirement which I can rent for 30 hrs per annum?would prefer a 20 to a 22!

Pace

Pace, it sounds OTT, but OTOH the place where I fly from when in L.A. (at KSMO) requires 5 hours dual before they let you loose in a Cirrus. Of course cheaper than in rip-off UK, but still...... no idea how they would treat your prior experience, though.

The problem is that you Pace are an old hand in this game, but take the "average" PPL pilot who is struggling to get notams, and flies with a map+stopwatch (because GPS is illegal outside the USA; minimum fine is death) and put him in a Cirrus and see how far he gets...

I used to rent out my TB20 years ago. If I was renting a Cirrus I would insist on some kind of course on all the installed equipment, for a start.

These planes need to be flown "by the numbers" but that is not how flying is taught in the PPL.

I don't suppose that an equity group on a SR22 based at Bournemouth would be of interest would it? It's based on five shares (two remain). With your experience, the checkout would be a short and fun affair!

Spec below, but PM for more details. (If this is against the forum policy, please remove with my apologies)

Fully IFR equipped SR22. Low hours (approx 700 hours) 2006 G2 GTS model with Avidyne screens, twin Garmin 430s, TKS system, Traffic system, TAWS, TWX weather detection, ADF/DME, CMax Plates, upgraded Avidyne autopilot (awesome!). 12 US gph at 140 KIAS cruise best economy. Owner CRI for checkouts and glass cockpit conversions. Local CAA Examiners for IR Renewals. Online booking system.

I've had a similar issue with Cirrus before, I spoke to the insurance broker direct who later agreed to issue an exception. At the time it was 1,000hrs Piston and/or COPA course required to be allowed to fly a Cirrus.

I believe this has since changed again but it still may not harm you to speak with the broker to reach some form of agreement.

Hope it helps...

You certainly don't need 1k hrs to get insurance for an SR22 in the UK, but it is likely to be a lot cheaper if you have 1k hrs than say 200. Mine (TB20) has fallen steadily, despite the agreed hull cover remaining the same, though I think the biggest drop is ~500hrs and not a lot after that.

Pace - PM sent

Pace,

Often these insurance requirements are made up. I joined the committed of our club a few years ago. They used to have a 5 hour checkout for insurance purposes. Everyone genuinely believed that it was a requirement of the insurance.

My position involved renewing the insurance policy, and when I looked, low and behold....there was no such requirement. Our checkout was quickly changed to whatever was necessary.

I too suggest that you talk to someone higher up in the organisation to see if an exception can be made, or if it's there just to put off the newly qualified PPL and the instructor is trotting out the same line for everyone.

dp

Pace

I'm pretty sure I know which group you're talking about and it is indeed an insurance requirement. 10 hours make and model in the last year before solo rental. So 10 hours 2 years ago wouldn't count, nor 10 in a different Cirrus even if recent.

Cirrus are particularly difficult to insure........

One UK insurer increased the excess by 5x immediately after the chute pull...

But often insurance requirements are created for an effect.
I knew one operator who built in minimum twin time which was very high to stop the owner being bombarded by low time multi engine pilots offering to fly for free to protect his own approved pilots! Yes it had the effect of lowering the insurance but a minimum of 5oo multi hours had the effect of keeping poachers away!
10 hrs is a quarter of a PPL course! You can get a jet rating for less than 10 hrs.
Is a very experienced pilot treated in the same way as a 50 hr recent student!
If the pilot only needs 2 hrs so be it if he needs 20 hrs so be it!
But 10 hrs smacks of job creation for the instructor rather than an over cautious insurance company

Pace

Pace I have sent you some more information.

For the purpose of the general discussion I hope this doesn't degenerate into too much ill informed discussion about insurance and what is or isn't possible.

I suspect we all know that some groups, renters etc use all sorts of devices to create an income stream - sometimes it is justified, sometimes not.

The Cirrus is a high performance aircraft and understandably insurers want some comfort as to how the aircraft will be operated. There has been enough old wives tales doing the rounds and undoubtedly some of the stories have caused the insurers to look more carefully at their requirements but the insurers aren't as stupid as we sometimes like to make out. The market is driven by risk assessment not risk perception.

Fuji

Thanks! I am not saying for one minute that the requirement of 10 hours was fixed for income generation.
I pointed out that I have known insurance requirements fixed for job and pilot rate protection it does happen a lot.
I was hugely surprised at the requirement for 10 hrs which is understandable on a 50 hr PPL but not so on a 5000 hr ATP with a lot of piston time on many complex singles.
It maybe that this is a legitimate requirement by this particular insurance company but it does appear very high.
One poster stated that with only 50 hrs he was required to do 5 hrs before being allowed solo so why 10 hrs regardless of experience.
For me that would be wasting my money.

Pace

PACE
 

I found myself in much the same position as you when looking for Cirrus insurance, they wanted ten hours dual on the Cirrus, the 12,000 hours, ATPL & instructors rating all seemed to count for nothing.

What we did was phone around the market and find an insurance company that would see a little common sense, these peope reduced the requirement to differences training with an instructor ( about an hour in the air and two on the ground).

This has all come about because of the chute, the insurers are living in fear that at the first sight of trouble you will deploy the chute and write off the aircraft.

This of course is not true as a chute deploy is not an automatic wright off, it depends on what you hit as you land.

Yeah but I wonder what they do with the avionics, which must be worth close to 1/3 of the whole plane, even at OEM cost. They may be functional on the bench which means they will get tagged as Serviceable but nobody who knows their history will touch them with a bargepole.

The engine and prop are of course scrap unless rebuilt, so there's another 20k-30k or so.

Pace the transition course was 10 hours with 5 flying and 5 hours for avionics & systems, I agree it sounds a lot and from what I can see it is driven by the fact that for whatever reasons even experienced guys were killing them selves or wrecking aircraft and insurers deemed a transition and time on type were in fact more important than total hours.


A&C how long ago was that and out of interest how many Cirrus Hours do you now have?

Sadly today Cirrus Fatal accident number 89

Plane that crashed came from Millington, pilot dead | News | Millington News

Only a useful statistic if you also tell us how many people have ever died in any other type of light aircraft!

There have always been aircraft which have had a bad reputation Years back it was the V tailed Bonanza or doctor killer more recent the Malibu!
We now have the VLJs like the Eclipse targeted at the owner Pilot.
A few weeks ago the very sad accident that wrote off a complete family in a PC12 with a single pilot.
What is not clear to me with the Cirrus and high insurance is why?
Is it a result of the chute and write offs caused by its deployment?
Is it because the chute lures inexperienced or even experienced pilots into conditions they would be wary of if the chute was not there?
Is it because of handling characteristics which require very precise operation by the pilot?
Is it poor training?
Is it because the aircraft attracts low time pilots who are out of their depth in the aircraft?
Is it none of the above?

Regardless I have flown both models on demos and once as a safety pilot on a longer trip. They had a fast roll rate which I timed as the same as a firefly aerobatic machine I flew.
They were also a bit slippery but not anything a reasonable pilot could not cope with.
Handflown it would probably be demanding in IMC with a pilot who was not a good instrument pilot.
Other than that and a slightly high stall speed there did not appear to be anything nasty in its handling that I noticed in the short time I had on them.

Back to discussing the Cirrus :ugh: when I was just looking at renting 30 hours on one at a reasonable cost and a reasonable checkout! And not a 1/3 of that time with an instructor holding my hand.

Pace

As an owner for some years my opinion and 0.02 cents worth

Because of the higher hull value generally and there were categorically to many crashes for a time much higher than average GA and other TAA aircraft. Now it is pretty much comparable with other TAA.

Certainly not IMHO (I know we have done it to death recently) Many years there are ZERO caps pulls but 10+ fatality's

Debatable, but I do not think significant personally and from my observations, although weather and VFR into IMC is a significant factor in Cirrus Pilot error's

I think like any high performance aircraft a Cirrus can get you into trouble but from a handling point of view it is pretty standard, too high a landing speed is often a Pilot error leading to crashes and often death. Plus base to final stall can be an issue if not flown correctly. Other than that handles beautifully.

Yes I think a factor, specific to type, I think for some years also incorrect training with landing speeds and technique, these issues largely addressed now and standards improved dramatically with the efforts of COPA and CPPP (Cirrus Pilot Proficiency Programmes)



No I honestly do not think so, more than half the Cirrus fatal's are Pilots with 400+ hours, therefore generally out of the traditional killing zone
Is it none of the above? I also believe much more than half are pilots with Instrument ratings. The low hour thing due to marketing hype is a bit of a myth.

Not sure of current facts but up until 2008 there was only one fatality with a pilot less than 150 hours, and that was Cory Liddle in NYC who had an instructor on board. The estate tried to sue Cirrus for an aircraft malfunction but I believe black and white Pilot error.