I spent some time with the Cirrus Owner’s and Pilots Association (COPA) a while back. I spoke with the group’s president and a number of its members. I wrote this article:

 

http://www.aero-news.net/news/genav.cfm?ContentBlockID=5B0B4A1E-AF54-4F69-9813-2BB3EC7BDCED&Dynamic=1

 

I found the group, and especially its leadership, to be competent, sincere and most importantly, proactive about GA safety. I’ve heard some on this list speculate an emergency recovery switch could be an “enabler” encouraging someone to attempt maneuvers or accept risks beyond their skill level. Based on what I know about COPA, nothing could be further from the truth – at least about its membership.

 

If you have a minute, indulge my verbosity and let me tell you a story.

 

A number of years back I went for a rather spirited motorcycle ride with a friend of my brother’s – let’s call him Mike -- while I was home on leave from the USAF. We headed east of Ogden, UT to hit a few of the lovely canyon roads found in the Uintah range. Mike was riding an early 1000cc Suzuki GSXR which delivered rather astonishing performance – I was definitely having trouble keeping up with him on my lowly Yamaha Seca 750. Obviously, Mike was an accomplished rider who knew how to extract from his machine the performance of which it was capable.

 

In one particularly gnarly stretch of road, Mike once again easily pulled away from me. I did my best to keep up, but after about five minutes I wasn’t even catching the odd fleeting glimpse of him at the end of a straightaway – Mike had left me in the dust…

 

Coming around a really tight hairpin I noticed the pitch of the road changed a couple of times as I proceeded requiring some interesting control inputs to maintain my lane. At the end of the turn I saw Mike’s Suzuki in the ditch, with Mike sitting along side. I immediately stopped, turned around and rushed back to check on Mike who had suffered, thankfully, no serious injury (we were both properly geared up with helmets and leather outerwear). I picked up Mike’s bike, which also had suffered only minor damage (man that thing was light!) and pushed it up on the shoulder while Mike remained seated on the grass.

 

I asked Mike what had happened and he said he’d gotten dizzy and lost his balance when the pitch of the road had changed in the middle of the curve. When Mike tried to stand up he stumbled and would have fallen if I hadn’t been there to lean on. I wondered if he’d been injured more seriously than I first thought…

 

Turned out Mike was still dizzy – and it had nothing to do with the changing pitch of the road.

 

After we got Mike back home and my bother and I had returned from retrieving Mike’s bike, we found out what had truly happened. Mike’s daughter had come home from daycare the Thursday before (this was Saturday) with an ear ache. She was young, just a toddler, and was very vocal and demonstrative about her discomfort. She kept Mike and his wife up late until they decided she needed to go to the ER. The docs there pronounced an inner-ear infection, prescribed antibiotics and acetaminophen for the pain, and sent the relieved family home. Do you see where this is going yet?

 

Apparently, Mike caught whatever bug his daughter had. When we’d left early that Saturday morning Mike had been feeling fine. But this particular bug was very specific about the area of Mike’s body it liked, apparently just the vestibular system of his inner-ear. Worse, when the symptoms hit, they hit all at once for Mike. His symptoms were so bad when the DID hit, I even considered stopping once or twice on the way home to call a cab because he was having difficulty just sitting on the back of my bike and holding on.

 

Now think about this happening to a pilot flying IFR in a technologically advanced aircraft like a SR22.

 

I realize the rarity of my speculative situation, but that’s my point. The blue button is NOT there for the situations you can think of, it’s there for all the situations you CAN’T think of…

 

John,

 

There was a rather extensive discussion of the Cirrus accident record on the Cessna Pilot's Association mail list last year.

 

Bottom line - - there is rather convincing evidence that the typical Cirrus owner flys his airplane something like  1.5 to 2.0 times as many hours each year as the comparable owner of other late model high performance aircraft.  And in particular, they DO tend to fly them a higher percentage of time on IFR flight plans.  

 

Whether they do that "incompetently" or competently - - is really unknown.

 

However,  when properly adjusted for the  unusually high usage pattern - - the accident rate does not appear to be abnormal.