Mooney factory closed again

[RobertGary1]

  On 2/12/2020 at 11:44 PM, Jerry 5TJ said:

The next big sales “feature” may be autoland.   The Piper M600 is available with that now, the Cirrus jet soon will have the “magic” button.  Others to follow.  

Sooner or later one of those planes will land and come to a stop on the runway with an incapacitated or dead pilot in the seat.   

I suspect higher-end Cirrus piston planes will be offered with that option soon.   I think emergency autoland will further enable Cirrus to dominate the piston market.  

 

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I think the Marketeers will get all excited about it before finding out that customers don't care.

-Robert

[Andy95W]

  On 2/13/2020 at 12:12 AM, RobertGary1 said:

I think the Marketeers will get all excited about it before finding out that customers don't care.

-Robert

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I'm not sure, but I think this might be one of Mooney's problems.  We don't care, but the people who can afford a $900,000 airplane do care- or they have have so much money they don't give a shit about a few more dollars, but they do want the latest and greatest stuff out there.

Mooney is trying to sell a 50 year old product with a fancy new turbocharged engine and a second door.  Cirrus is trying to sell a 15 year old product with all the latest bells and whistles and it always had a second door.  And their wives like the idea of a parachute because it makes them feel safer.

Five pages into this latest Mooney factory thread and we're all still in denial about the future of Mooney.  Beechcraft and Cessna basically merged and they're still only selling around 5 new A36 Bonanzas a year.

[carusoam]

  On 2/12/2020 at 8:25 PM, 1980Mooney said:

I am always surprised at the knee jerk reaction to completely dismiss the value of CAPS/BRS anytime it is mentioned and instead completely blame the pilot.  

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Explanation...

It is challenging to accept a parachute that can’t ever be added to a standard Mooney...

How people deal with that varies like their choice of single malts...

Try to be nice to everyone, no matter what their choices are.

You will also notice...if you say something mean about Brand B, or Brand C... you probably won’t offend many Mooney owners around here...

 

Now,  let’s look at things that can be added to Mooneys...
 

Autopilots with auto land could be nice...

And terribly expensive...

If it ever becomes available...

 

One thing that doesn’t last long...  a high level of negativity doesn’t gain many friends... stay positive, ignore the negativity... especially when it is related to things that can’t be changed...
 

Best regards,

-a-

[jetdriven]

I thought that was the one with the pilot heard the engine was missing or something and he panicked and pull the chute. 

[0TreeLemur]

  On 2/14/2020 at 12:47 AM, philip_g said:

Not a good place to be in the clouds with no situational awareness. I'm genuinely curious how one loses the ASI and then subsequently loses the ability to navigate completely but time will tell. Probably not until spring, but it will. Also like to know why they departed a mountain airport with no real options to land in an emergency when the airport is well below minimums...

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Amen.  Any time below MSA and in clouds without SA is borrowed time...

[jetdriven]

This.  “ the pilot later told authorities, his instruments “went haywire” and indicated the plane’s engine was stalling, Steindler said. The pilot, 50-year-old Tyler Noel of Verona, Wisconsin, later said he didn’t think the plane was actually stalling, though he only had seconds to decide whether to deploy the plane’s parachute, which he did, he said.”

[Andy95W]

  On 2/14/2020 at 7:36 AM, jetdriven said:

This.  “ the pilot later told authorities, his instruments “went haywire” and indicated the plane’s engine was stalling, Steindler said. The pilot, 50-year-old Tyler Noel of Verona, Wisconsin, later said he didn’t think the plane was actually stalling, though he only had seconds to decide whether to deploy the plane’s parachute, which he did, he said.”

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More than likely, most of us here probably agree the guy is a moron.

But his wife now fully believes he is a brilliant pilot for getting her back on the ground safely.  And in the future she will never fly in a small airplane that doesn't have a parachute.

[N9201A]

  On 2/14/2020 at 12:47 AM, philip_g said:

No, http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2020/01/cirrus-sr22t-g6-n288wt-accident.html
 
https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/ReportGeneratorFile.ashx?EventID=20200128X35830&AKey=1&RType=HTML&IType=LA
 
Also like to know why they departed a mountain airport with no real options to land in an emergency when the airport is well below minimums...

Asked an acquaintance this once under similar (albeit uneventful) circumstances. His response: “If I get in trouble, l can always just pull the chute.”

That worked for him until he put himself in a situation the chute couldn’t help, night CFIT.

[chriscalandro]

It's not always about speed. Innovation, technology, safety, economy, speed would be my list in order when it comes to buying new things.

Given 900k on a new or used airplane the mooney would be out very quickly for me. For the money there are plenty of better options. In the used market at that price point, mooney isn't even in the same league. The platform is just too far behind the other modern options.

the non modern options in the sub 200k category it's hard to beat the Mooney, but that doesn't help the factory at all.

I have my mooney because it was affordable and low maintenance. I couldn't afford my list.

[steingar]

I never wanted the 'chute because of the increased maintenance costs, i.e. the decennial repack.  Then again, I'm not going to take off into IMC in the middle of a bunch of rocks I can't out climb either.

[jetdriven]

  On 2/14/2020 at 11:36 AM, philip_g said:

That isn't inline with what he said on the atc recording, or actually his wife. She was the one talking mostly. It's also probably not the main reason, it's more likely the fact that takes was screaming at him and synvis show a large mountain coming at him he couldn't outclimb in said condition.

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I mean it came from a news article and supposedly they’re not lying about what the pilot said, right? 

[ilovecornfields]

Seems to be a lot of “chute envy” going on here. CFIT is almost always fatal. Pulling the chute within the parameters is almost always survivable. They made a split-second decision and walked away. If they’d made a split-second decisión the other way and it had gone badly it would have gone VERY badly. Sometimes when we make choices with very asymmetric consequences (wrecked plane vs, death) it pays to make the conservative choice. 

I’m glad two fellow aviators are alive and well and able to fly again.

[jetdriven]

  On 2/14/2020 at 9:51 PM, ilovecornfields said:

Seems to be a lot of “chute envy” going on here. CFIT is almost always fatal. Pulling the chute within the parameters is almost always survivable. They made a split-second decision and walked away. If they’d made a split-second decisión the other way and it had gone badly it would have gone VERY badly. Sometimes when we make choices with very asymmetric consequences (wrecked plane vs, death) it pays to make the conservative choice. 

I’m glad two fellow aviators are alive and well and able to fly again.

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Interestingly. The airspeed failed. Then they were in the clear, then flew into a cloud then pulled the chute. All about 4nm from the airport. Wow. I mean direct -enter - enter would have been a non event. 

https://www.flyingmag.com/story/news/cirrus-parachute-saves-wisconsin-couple/

[ilovecornfields]

  On 2/15/2020 at 3:20 AM, jetdriven said:

Interestingly. The airspeed failed. Then they were in the clear, then flew into a cloud then pulled the chute. All about 4nm from the airport. Wow. I mean direct -enter - enter would have been a non event. 

https://www.flyingmag.com/story/news/cirrus-parachute-saves-wisconsin-couple/

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You have 5G? I’m jealous!

I’m not disagreeing with you that they could have made it. I think there is a fundamental difference in the Cirrus training philosophy. My CFI recently did a BFR for a guy in a Cirrus and he asked him how to recover from a spin and the answer was not PARE but “pull the chute.” Apparently that’s in the POH. I think the answer to almost every perceived danger can be “pull the chute.” (I’ve also heard “pull early and pull often.”). 
 

Maybe I didn’t make my statement very clear but it seems to me that they got into a situation they weren’t confident they could get themselves out of, they pulled the chute and walked away unharmed. Was this the best airmanship? Maybe not. Did they make the “right” choice? Maybe. They’re both safe and their insurance rates are going up. That’s a pretty good outcome for something that possibly (not likely, but possibly) could have been fatal.

I’m not selling my Mooney and buying a Cirrus anytime soon, but it seems a little ridiculous to me that we make fun of Cirrus pilots whenever they pull the chute and walk away. Some of the fatal accidents we’ve read about here would have probably been survival with a parachute. Seems like we could acknowledge that they are different airplanes with different characteristic and recognize that they both have their pros and cons. We’ve already done that when it comes to marketing...

[PJClark]

"I think the answer to almost every perceived danger can be “pull the chute.” (I’ve also heard “pull early and pull often.”). "

That's a correct guess.  I first flew a Cirrus (SR20) in Aug 2018 on a lark...to try to cure the itch to fly after a 13 year hiatus. That didn't work :-) but here's the first point:  on the way back to the airport I asked the instructor--"if the engine quit now, would you put it in that field over there?" He looked at me like a deer in the headlights and when he recovered, he said "No, pull CAPS.  We do not land a Cirrus off-airport"

I completed the entire SR22 training program later in the fall of 2018, again trying to scratch the itch (which still didn't work).  I can tell you for abstolute certain that the Cirrus mindset is actively, deliberately, repeatedly, no-questions-asked:  "If there is any doubt, Pull CAPS".

And the training materials use the ejection seat as an analog.  When ejection seats first came along, a generation of pilots who'd been trained without one kept killing themselves because they wouldn't pull the handles.  Which resulted in the Air Force ( at least) fostering a culture of "give it back to the taxpayer" if things went to hell.  Cirrus actually USES that storyline to equate it to CAPS.

the accident y'all describe means they're successful. And two people walked away because they were successful. I  would bet money that between them the couple had a pre-briefed contract on what they would do in an immediate emergency situation, and one of them perceived one of those and was the first one to pull the handle.

Bottom line: they did what they were trained to do and they "gave the airplane back to the insurance company".

[ArtVandelay]

So does that make a Cirrus more or less expensive to insure?


Tom

[GeeBee]

I will tell you this about Cirrus. Expensive does not describe the maintenance. I was at a shop the other day where two high time SR20 were in for annuals. The shop manager told me on annual was going to run 30K, without a CAPs replacement. He said just about every part is proprietary. Example he pointed to was one needed a new seat belt on the pilot's seat. Just the latch side, not the whole assembly. Cannot go to Amsafe, have to go through Cirrus. 2700 dollars. New battery box, 5500. He said a lot of used Cirrus buyers get maintenance sticker shock because the airplane price is competitive with Mooneys and Bonanza but then the first annual drives it all home.

[ArtVandelay]

  On 2/15/2020 at 4:08 PM, GeeBee said:

I will tell you this about Cirrus. Expensive does not describe the maintenance. I was at a shop the other day where two high time SR20 were in for annuals. The shop manager told me on annual was going to run 30K, without a CAPs replacement. He said just about every part is proprietary. Example he pointed to was one needed a new seat belt on the pilot's seat. Just the latch side, not the whole assembly. Cannot go to Amsafe, have to go through Cirrus. 2700 dollars. New battery box, 5500. He said a lot of used Cirrus buyers get maintenance sticker shock because the airplane price is competitive with Mooneys and Bonanza but then the first annual drives it all home.

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I wonder if that’s because Mooney & Bonanzas were certified under old regulations vs new?

[GeeBee]

Not entirely. It is a  business decision. One is liability based, the other is profit motive. As this shop owner pointed out many parts manuals point to a bolt or nut and call out a NAS, AN or MS spec. Cirrus will call out a part number. What you get may be a standard AN bolt or nut, but it has passed through Cirrus' hands. Now in defense of Cirrus there is a lot of counterfeit hardware out there, so this defends the integrity of their product. It also adds to their profitability. 

[GeeBee]

Also want to point out about pulling CAPS in a spin. The Cirrus was not spin tested. Cirrus convinced the FAA of an alternate method of compliance. That means CAPS .Any time you enter a spin in a Cirrus, you are a test pilot. Just eyeballing the airframe it looks to me like a spin is not a maneuver easily recovered from. Large span, short coupling, smallish verticals. The AA-1 had a big red placard that said NO SPINS. Ask me how I know they meant it!

[Jerry 5TJ]

  On 2/15/2020 at 5:37 PM, GeeBee said:

The Cirrus was not spin tested

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Cirrus says they spin tested both the SR20 and SR22.  
Cirrus Interview

[Guest]

  On 2/15/2020 at 4:08 PM, GeeBee said:

I will tell you this about Cirrus. Expensive does not describe the maintenance. I was at a shop the other day where two high time SR20 were in for annuals. The shop manager told me on annual was going to run 30K, without a CAPs replacement. He said just about every part is proprietary. Example he pointed to was one needed a new seat belt on the pilot's seat. Just the latch side, not the whole assembly. Cannot go to Amsafe, have to go through Cirrus. 2700 dollars. New battery box, 5500. He said a lot of used Cirrus buyers get maintenance sticker shock because the airplane price is competitive with Mooneys and Bonanza but then the first annual drives it all home.

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Being the owner of both a Cirrus Service Center, a Mooney Service Center and a Diamond Service Center as well as having experience on a variety of other airframes, I can say that in my experience a Cirrus is no more expensive than any other make of airplane.                              
 

Clarence

[GeeBee]

  On 2/15/2020 at 9:30 PM, Jerry 5TJ said:

Cirrus says they spin tested both the SR20 and SR22.  
Cirrus Interview

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https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2003/february/pilot/spinning-in

 

Your cite says they spun the airplane, but as I said, did not use that testing to meet certification requirements, rather relying on CAPS. That means it does not meet the spin recovery requirements.

[GeeBee]

  On 2/16/2020 at 12:47 AM, M20Doc said:

Being the owner of both a Cirrus Service Center, a Mooney Service Center and a Diamond Service Center as well as having experience on a variety of other airframes, I can say that in my experience a Cirrus is no more expensive than any other make of airplane.                              
 

Clarence

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So you start off with a 1000 dollar a year reserve for the CAPS. Tell me how you overcome that cost differential vs other makes?

 

[jetdriven]

That specific line item is probably more than offset by the Lycoming cam and lifter spalling and early engine replacement on our planes.  30 grand for that.  This board has has a hundred owners with the same issue.