A Close Look at Cirrus
When Alan Klapmeier was in his stride at Cirrus five years ago, he liked to say that one thing he hoped to accomplish at Cirrus was to prove that you don’t need special DNA to fly an airplane. That’s probably true as far as it goes, but the other shoe to be dropped is this: You might need some special DNA to survive flying an airplane.
That’s one of several conclusions I came to after poring over more than 500 accident reports for this month’s article on SR20 and SR22 safety. With its 26G seats, crashworthy cabin space and especially the CAPS BRS parachute, Cirrus didn’t necessarily promise the SR20/22 would be one the safest airplanes ever. But the fact that buyers would readily conclude this for themselves has been instrumental in the Cirrus success story, because of the parachute’s “spouse factor.” So with all this going for it, why don’t the Cirrus airplanes have the best safety record ever? The record shows they are just average and the fatal accident rate is a little worse than average.