How much weight does that add? Also, in REAL numbers, how many successful deployments have there been?
As of April, there were three. http://www.cirrusdesign.com/downloads/pdf/nr_04_14_04_CAPSsaves5.pdf
I was at a manufacturing facility over the weekend where they're fitting a mod to a new Cirrus. We got to talking about the chute and the comment was made that the very large majority of deployments (almost all) in the Cirrus were unnecessary, and that the airplane become scrap upon deployment. Ah, but the alternative!
The first one was due to an aileron falling off following some
service work being done. One in April was the pilot's judgement call after multiple systems
began failing in IMC following...some service work. In that one the plane survived. I guess we
could second-guess the pilot's decision and from the safety of the ground talk about what
'I' (being a much better pilot than the decision-maker, of course) would have done.
But use of the term 'very large majority of deployments' in a sample size of 'a few' seems
to me to be a bit over the top.
Greg
