Jay Honeck
Touchdown! Greaser!
Thanks, Ron. Great stuff.In the past, I've run analyses of Cirrus accidents against Cessna 210s, Cessna 172s, and a combined set of Glasair and Lancairs. I haven't run comparisons against fleet size (yet), since the Cirrus is so much newer. When you have a plane that's in production for less 20 years, it's a lot more likely that the great majority of the planes are still actively flying. The FAA re-registration process affects this, but I'm still anticipating that more of the older designs are licensed but inactive. This, of course, would skew the results.
My standard analysis compares a set of accident causes to the TOTAL number of accidents of that type. In the process, I also compute how often accidents are precipitated by power failure (any type, including fuel exhaustion) and mechanical failure.
The Cirrus scores pretty well, in comparison to those three other types:
Percentage of accidents starting with power failure:
Cirrus: 13.0%
Cessna 210: 31.6%
Glasair/Lancairs: 30.4%
Cessna 172: 15.2%
Again, this includes cases of fuel exhaustion and starvation. This can be significant, as only 2.6% of Cirrus accidents involve either, a much lower percentage than the other sets (the Cessna 210 is 13.8%).
EXCLUDING Fuel Exhaustion and starvation:
Cirrus: 10.4%
Cessna 210: 18.1%
Glasair/Lancairs: 25.1%
Cessna 172: 8.8%
Percentage of accidents beginning with mechanical failure:
Cirrus: 16%
Cessna 210: 28.6%
Glasair/Lancair: 23.1%
Cessna 172: 7.2%
The number of Cirrus accidents and Glasair/Lancair accidents is close (231 vs. 247) and some interesting comparisons can be made. The Cirrus has 20 more "Pilot Miscontrol" accidents (118 vs. 98), which is interesting when you consider the belief that the two "hot" homebuilts are more challenging to fly. However, the median total time of the Cirrus pilots is less than half that of the Glasair/Lancair set (727 vs. 1700).
The cases of continued VFR into IFR conditions is almost identical, 11 cases Cirrus, 10 for Glasair/Lancair.
Engine failures blamed on mechanical issues is the same (13), but this does not include cases caused by faulty maintenance or by the builder.
Ron Wanttaja
And, of course, odd. I can't remember the last power failure of a C-210, but I can rattle off three Cirrus chute deployments after power loss.
Is that because there are so few 210s flying, compared to Cirri?