saw a brand new turbo Cirrus that missed a tough cross-wind landing yesterday (18 knots gusting to 25 at 90 degrees to the single runway) sitting in the weeds to the side of the runway with its gear sheared off, wings cracked/broken in several places and prop tips sheared off. No one was injured, but the plane is totaled.
The student pilot (never flown before buying the plane) was getting a lesson from a Cirrus factory instructor.
Lessons learned (from my perspective as a non-instructor, others please chime in):
The flight instructor should have flown this landing, asking a low time student to land in this situation was a set-up to fail and also teaches questionable judgment.
know your limitations: if you don’t think you can handle a situation, ask for help or find other options. There were two airports nearby with crossing runways where the wind would not have been a problem.
The cabin and airframe design did a good job of protecting the occupants.
Easy to 20 / 20 quarterback, as we weren’t there… Do you know any details on the experience of the buyer? You say student, but was he a pilot learning to fly a Cirrus or a student learning to fly?
Problem lies in my question above.
In defense of the Cirrus Rep, the Cirrus rep is there to teach you the functionality of flying a Cirrus, not a plane in general. What was the experience of the student? When I flew with a Cirrus rep, he never quizzed me on my experience or hours which surprised me, though he did see me land in my Sundowner before we took off. Maybe he judged me on that from the outside, donno?
Actually, I was there. So were other flight instructors who had canceled their lessons because they did not think it was an appropriate day for their students. They pointed out to me that they wouldn’t want their students to learn that it is ok to fly this (or any plane) anywhere near or above its and your limits. As I said in my original post - the student had never flown a plane before buying the Cirrus, a zero time pilot.
The Cirrus factory instructor was “purchased” with the plane to teach the student(s) how to fly ab initio, not just fly a Cirrus. He knew that.
C’mon Allen, I was trying to find something something positive to say about this sad situation. Cut me a little slack!
If this is true, and I honestly have troubles imagining this, then something was radically wrong with that Cirrus rep.
In the showing of the Cirrus at my airport, the rep says it’s a three day course that Cirrus provides, nothing close to pilot training as you are indicating above. The training course only goes over the MFD, PFD and the Garmin 430’s and POH standards, not on how to fly a plane.
I heard from several people that they purchased a full year of instructor time so they would have someone to not only teach them how to fly, but also to act as a mentor pilot in several real world flights as they learned about flying. That is often done in pilots transitioning to turbine aircraft and shows some very good and conservative judgment on their part, but the ball clearly got dropped here.
We’ve all banged the first few landings - they’re better done in rat-trap 20 year old Warrior, Skyhawk or 152 - geesh. 20kt crosswind landings in a SR22-GTS with a student pilot.
Will the madness never end. I cna only IMAGINE what his insurance premium was - and that whatever it was, it was not enough.
Actually, quite a large number of people do. Cirrus has said that a significant number of it’s buyers have never flown before buying their Cirrus. JAL trains their pilots, who have never flown before, in brand new Beechcraft planes. The military trains all of its pilots in expensive jet trainers. As an extreme example, I seem to recall that John Travolta got his private pilots license in a jet.
Not true. I’ve personally trained about 20 Air Force pilots in rat-trap 172’s and warriors. Not to mention that the Air Force Academy has a fleet of Diamond trainers and many students learn to fly gliders first.
Not only what cfijames says above, full motion sims are now becoming the preferred training tool once they learn the basics of flight via clapped out 172’s.
