Cirrus – Great Aircraft or Widow Maker?

The following entry was written for Wings Magazine in June, 2010.

The most recent crash and resulting deaths involving a Cirrus SR22 at the Toronto Buttonville Airport, has people once again questioning this aircraft and its record of operation and incidents. While it is too soon to state with accuracy what happened and why, the facts in public domain are that on take-off the aircraft was trailing smoke, gained low altitude flight and while in the process of turning left away from the airport appeared to stall and then crash into the roof of a building just off the airport property. While there were two unfortunate victims in the aircraft, thankfully nobody in the building was seriously injured. Any loss to the aviation community is a tragedy that affects us all. What compounds this one further is that it is yet another in a seeming big and growing series of events involving Cirrus aircraft. The questions seem to outnumber the answers at this point. The Transportation Safety Board is in charge now and will hopefully shed light on just what happened and why.

Cirrus Design Corporation was founded in 1984 – initially to produce the VK 30 kit aircraft. Since then they have grown into two current certified factory produced aircraft – the SR20 and SR22. Other aircraft are under planning and development.

All Cirrus SR models are equipped with their well publicized Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS). This is a ballistic “chute” that deploys from the back of the aircraft in a life threatening emergency. Without question the system has saved lives – approximately 30 according to publicly available information. Cirrus is the first manufacturer to receive FAA certification for this system on a “production” aircraft.

The SR22 was first certified in November of 2000. It is higher powered version of SR20 and seats four. Since 2003, this aircraft has come standard with the Avidyne Entegra primary flight display (PFD). In May of 2008, Cirrus announced that a new cockpit – the Garmin Perspective would be offered as an option on their Turbo models. The concept and use of PFD avionics follows the industry thinking of most aircraft manufacturers today and let’s be honest – it is what professional pilots face in the real world. Others have integrated this technology with great success.

Another innovation from Cirrus is their split leading edge - what they call a Passive Safety Concept. The idea is to build a slightly lower angle of incidence on the outer panel than on the inner panel. The effect of this is that the inner panel stalls first while the outer one continues to fly – allowing the pilot to maintain roll control with the ailerons.

For the most part this is agreed to work as the company says however records and reports readily found “on line” show that violent inputs can make the concept fail. Case in point, in an incident in the US during 2008, a similar aircraft crashed a few hundred feet off the ground while on approach for landing. Leading up the loss of control and impact, the pilot had executed a 60 degree plus turn while in a descending mode. According to data recovered from the Avidyne avionics post crash, it appears he tried to counter what was going to become a spin with a hard right counter action. Too little, too late and too fast would be the short answer. A stall resulted and the airplane went in.

As some have ventured to comment, despite all the great design and engineering, the Cirrus is as prone as any other aircraft to pilot overreaction. It has led some “hangar chat” to offer that Cirrus pilots may have a false sense of security based on the sales pitch for the Passive Safety Concept – and a feeling they can perhaps get away with more in this case? That coupled with the CAPS, and there is no question, people buy a Cirrus thinking that it is a safe aircraft. Google the subject though and you might be surprised. You will find a site called the Cirrus Aircraft: Aviation Law Monitor. What does that say about the number of accidents and overall safety of the aircraft? There are books on subject too and numerous articles and association comments. Of note – here in Canada we have had a better operational record with this aircraft than other nations statistically. The reported statistics show however that globally between 2001 and April 2009 62 Cirrus SR22 aircraft crashed, resulting in 48 fatalities. In addition many of the pilots were veteran flyers – not students or low time recent grads. Which all leads one to question – is there an issue with this aircraft? These numbers really seem to show that something is out of whack. Hopefully we learn from the most recent incident and prevent as much a repeat tragedy.