What's wrong with Cirrus Pilots?

[Bobcat1]

Actually Aviation Consumer is the only credible source of reviews on many aviation products. From landing lights to chocks to oil I don't know where else to turn. As for aircraft reviews they are better than AOPA Pilot and Flying. When it comes to accident data the FAA and NTSB provide no guidance as to flight hours by type. COPA has, at times, put together fairly good numbers for the SR22 but that's meaningless without comparable numbers for similar mission aircraft. While I disagree with Aviation Consumer's numbers I respect that their effort is probably as good as anyone's.

Probably because AOPA Pilot and Flying print articles to sell you airplanes. Aviation Consumer gets you a bit closer to the real story. Yeah, they could do it better, but they're much more trustworthy than the other two slick magazines.

 

[Jim Logajan]

Where is the NTSB data for the above statistics. After all only the NTSB tracks all the aviation accidents and not Aviation Consumer. I found in the past Aviation Consumer to be in gross error on their assessments. Unlike the FAA or the NTSB Aviation Consumer does not have the resources or knowledge to make any proper evaluation of aviation products.

José

According to the Aviation Consumer (AC) article, the count of fatal and non-fatal accidents comes directly from over 500 NTSB records. Most people running such statistics get a count of accidents by using NTSB records. The problem is in the numbers used to normalize the accident counts. AC estimated the fleet hours for each airplane type by taking the average annual hours flown per airplane, as given by the Aircraft Bluebook Price Digest (ABPD), and multiplying by the number of registered aircraft of that type as determined by the GAMA and the FAA registry.

APBD in turn collects hours reported flown from information made available during actual sales reports.

Cirrus has made available its own estimate of hours flown for its airplanes by using "warranty claims, parachute repacks, and other methods" - so AC used the Cirrus numbers as a cross-check against their own method of estimating hours flown. They found the two ways of estimating yielded numbers within 4% of each other.

 

[Alexb2000]

Cirrus has made available its own estimate of hours flown for its airplanes by using "warranty claims, parachute repacks, and other methods" - so AC used the Cirrus numbers as a cross-check against their own method of estimating hours flown. They found the two ways of estimating yielded numbers within 4% of each other.

Interesting point. Cirrus with a young fleet probably does fly many more hours on average vs. the piston GA norm. No one spends $800K to leave it in the hangar. Other types that have been made for 30-50+ years have a lot of un-airworthy tie down queens that probably skew their numbers toward better safety because they never leave the ground.

 

[Jim Logajan]

Besides, NTSB data is full of errors. There is no record of N273TE crash, for example. Airplane destroyed, 2 people died, but the only source of data is AirSafety wiki.

Unless the errors in the NTSB database favor one type of aircraft over another, such errors do not matter when one is simply doing comparative analysis (i.e. a simple ratio.) The errors are only significant when one is interested in getting at the absolute magnitude of the accident rate.

And as I point out in my last post, fleet hours are difficult to come by; the best that can be done is statistical sampling. And again, so long as the same methodology is used, one should still be able to use such estimates with reasonable confidence when doing comparisons.

 

[denverpilot]

Probably because AOPA Pilot and Flying print articles to sell you airplanes. Aviation Consumer gets you a bit closer to the real story. Yeah, they could do it better, but they're much more trustworthy than the other two slick magazines.

Which is sad. What serves "members" better, honest reviews or selling advertising?

This is especially directed at AOPA. Are they in business for the membership or in business to sell magazine ad impressions?

Flying, they're a pure magazine play. They can do as they please.

 

[Jim Logajan]

Interesting point. Cirrus with a young fleet probably does fly many more hours on average vs. the piston GA norm. No one spends $800K to leave it in the hangar. Other types that have been made for 30-50+ years have a lot of un-airworthy tie down queens that probably skew their numbers toward better safety because they never leave the ground.

As I understand the description of their methodology, they seemed to limit the accident stats to only those aircraft built since the 1980s. So while that is a legitimate concern, it doesn't seem to be operative.

(At some point I should simply suggest users go pay for access to the article. It was written by this guy, who has enough epaulettes to be pretty darn authoritative

 

[Jaybird180]

I'd seen that video previously and didnt notice he was changing the epaulettes.

 

[Threefingeredjack]

Loved the video, and I have seen that behavior more and more frequently. A few weeks ago as a friend and I entered the pattern in his PC-12 we were looking for the traffic we had picked up on the fish finder and saw a 172 about 1/2 mile outside our track. We called traffic in sight with color and make and he confirmed he was on downwind. We asked if we could go ahead since we were inside him and faster, he grumpily agreed. We were over the numbers when he called his turn to BASE.