Al the single engine work for the twin balances all the no engine work for the single.


FL280 is high altitude, same training.

RVSM is not significant training effort.


Balanced by all the FADEC failure modes you have to study for.


It is no accident that the TWO pilot type rating is WAY easier to get than the SINGLE pilot type rating. SF50 owners will be, by and large, single pilot (and there may not even be a crew type rating for the SF50). This means, they have to do it all, from day one.


Nearly every one applies analogously to the SF50, and I am sure the SF50 will its own share of unique ones.


SR22 is not a jet.


Automation IS complexity.

Automation makes the ROUTINE easier, but the FAILURES harder. Training is predominately about FAILURES.

Mike C.

Mike C.

Let's just disagree on automation. It can make things easier or more complex; it depends on the engineer.
Cirrus has emphasized simplicity. Eclipse did not.
Based on what a mechanic told me that flew a Meridian and a KA. With the same engine class; the KA has many more failure modes, much longer emergency procedures.... It comes back to design, and the choices the engineering team makes.

Tim

If true, manufacturers wouldn't keep INCREASING automation in their designs and DECREASING complexity. Nowadays there a lots of pilotless airplanes flying and this number will increase every year.

You and Auburn need to go demo a new SR22 because I don't think either of you have ever flown an airplane built later than 1975. The 2 of you love to write how this airplane game is soooooo hard but I've done all of these things and I just started in 2008. Nobody ever told me it was as hard as you guys make it sound. If I had someone telling me what you guys are telling everyone here I probably wouldn't have started flying.

First, I just want to go on record as saying I hate myself for still reading this thread and hate myself even more for commenting. I'm now officially part of the Jerry Springer section of Beechtalk.

Jason, none of this stuff is that hard, until it is. You've got a bunch of hours flying newer turbine powered equipment. Reading your posts in passing along the way, it occurs to me that you've been very lucky to have had very limited trouble, and it would seem to me that much of that luck probably comes from flying newer turbine powered equipment. To Mike C.'s point- it's not the automation that makes the flying more challenging, it's what to do when it fails and how to detect that failure that fills the emergency section pages.

If you've got limited experience in handling emergency, you're just not qualified yet to talk about what you'll do when the %#$@ hits the fan. Here's my sincere hope that you get to spend the rest of your time flying being able to take potshots from the peanut gallery because you never find out.

Youll never think you need that other engine either, until yours goes TU. Really, it's all a matter of perspective, same on the automation. It's all great- right until it's not.

No engineer can make 100% reliable automation.

Witness Airbus. Normally, the plane flies easier with normal law on the controls. Then the computer craps out with bad input and gives the pilot alternate law. Now the plane is HARDER to control, and the pilot has to learn BOTH modes. People died when the pilot couldn't handle it.


Revisionist history. Go back and read the Eclipse promotional materials. They mirror Cirrus as to how "easy" the plane will be to fly due to the automation.

Then came the type rating. Reality strikes again.

Your belief is only because the Eclipse exists and the SF50 doesn't, so you are free to imagine an ideal SF50 situation.


That would be a worthwhile exercise. Compare a Meridian AFM and King Air 90 AFM from the same vintage year. I bet they aren't as different as you think they are, and the procedures left out of the Meridian AFM are where the King Air has a viable option and the Meridian is just hosed.


Regulations and physics are inescapable. The engineering team simply can't make decisions that eliminate the vast majority of the emergency/abnormal procedures. If they could, EVERY maker would be doing that!

Mike C.

When was the SF50 built?

Is choosing to fly what I fly "luck"?

Am I lucky or are you MU2 drivers unaware of any advancements in aviation since the 1970's?

Increasing automation doesn't decrease complexity, it masks it. All the wonderful automated stuff has failures modes, which create ever more complex decision trees. Or you can just assume it will always all work right...YMMV.

If true, then why do manufactures keep adding automation and removing complexity?

Are digital airplanes suddenly falling form the sky?

My airplane can be equipped with: synthetic vision, LPV, WAAS, ADS-B in and out, active traffic, PFD/MFD, digital radar, NEXRAD, 406 MHz ELT, LED lighting, engine upgrade, prop upgrade, improved brakes, digital charts/plates.

Ask an owner of a 1990s biz jet if he can get all that. Many can't. Same is true of older G1000 installs, they are waiting for ADS-B out solutions even as of today in some cases.

I've been looking at jets. I actually PREFER the ones that came as steam gauges. Ironically, they are MORE upgradable today than the "integrated" versions. They also have fewer faults that take out more than one system due to systems being less integrated.

Mike C.

Automation IS complexity.

They add automation to make the ROUTINE simpler, but this comes at a cost of making the FAILURES harder., harder to diagnose, and harder to handle.

The automation can be confusing. For example, the day it took you three tries to get your autopilot to fly the approach into PDK. When the pilot and the machine disagree like that, things are complex.


In some cases, yes. Airbus has a number of cases where their automation definitely helped the crew take the plane to the accident scene. AF447 for example.

Closer to us in size, the Midway Eclipse accident shows how the engineers THOUGHT they made it simpler, but actually made it FAR more dangerous. The engineers added cross throttle coupling so that if one throttle sensor broke, both engines could be controlled by the remaining throttle. The unintended consequence is that when BOTH throttles were falsely deemed broken, NEITHER throttle controlled either engine. But for the amazing skills of the pilot, that would have killed people.

What was the result of the Midway situation? More emergency procedures in the AFM, more stuff for the PILOT to know and train for.

Automation IS complexity. It is the transfer of intelligence and action to a machine. The machine cannot know any more than what the designer put in it and sometimes that will be wrong. The pilot is then expected to be MORE sophisticated than the machine, not only to detect when the machine can't handle it, but then to handle the difficult situation safely.

Mike C.

This won't be any harder to fly and to train for than a TBM. The only additional system is FADEC and auto-throttle. TBM needs a type rating in most places outside of the US. Anyone who can make a 2+ mil investment in a plane has informed himself of the requirements and apparently the position holders were not deterred by the prospect.

Despite automation technically being more complicated, the systems driving them keep getting more reliable.

A g1000 is way more complicated with more failure modes than my old ki256 but it is more reliable.

I would take a fadec system on a single turbine any day of the week. Auto throttles too!

The ellipse example is interesting. I have read many posts on BT about how crazy the automation failure modes are of the eclipse yet no one has died in one yet. If the modes were that bad, the safety record would show it wouldn't they? Clearly a jet type rating weeded out most of the crap pilots.

The midway example happens in every type. Some weird failure almost completely cripples the bird and a good pilot gets lucky and lands. What type has that NOT happened to?


The Meredian is a very reliable little plane. Pilots continue to crash it. I am sure more automation (read:envelope protection) would have prevented more crashes than they cause. Per accident databases, newer ones are crashing less. All the new ones have more automation

i would bet automation has prevented way more accidents in Airbus planes than it has caused. Same for fly by wire systems by other manufactures. Really sucks if you are the first guy the automation kills but a lot of other folks are probably walking around bc of it.

The cirrus jet is an awesome little machine. its safety record will end up being a function of how well trained the pilots are. The envelope protection will probably save a bunch of pilots lives in the first year alone. The chute might save a few too, though surveying single engine turbine records, the engine failing does not seem to be a notable problem that is killing folks.

I agree with you 100%. And I think its not deniable by anyone who is paying attention that Cirrus is very committed to pilot training and safety. I think they have a very realistic and comprehensive understanding of the airmanship quality of the pilots who fly their airplanes and are designing a training program that will insure that those who buy their jet can fly it safely.

I agree with you 100%. And I think its not deniable by anyone who is paying attention that Cirrus is very committed to pilot training and safety. I think they have a very realistic and comprehensive understanding of the airmanship quality of the pilots who fly their airplanes and are designing a training program that will insure that those who buy their jet can fly it safely.

No, if you're referring to AF447, people died because the pilot didn't realize he was in stall, and even less so in a developing deep stall. It's pilot error, as clear as the day is. If he'd just pushed forward on stick, they'd be alive. The reason he had conflicting information, is because Thales made faulty pitot tubes that iced over that AF had neglected to exchange. It did warn for the stall, multiple times, but Pierre-Cedric Bonin did not ease up on the back pressure. The system did exactly as it should have.

After extreme AOA's, which AF447 was in after it developed into a deep stall, the system rejects the stall warner and it stops sounding. But guess what - it does exactly the same thing on a Boeing. Otherwise the stall warner would be blaring on the ground at every jerky maneuver or tailwind.

One glance at the AOA or even the AI or the GPS GS would have saved the day. That's why AOA is the save-all. It should have been standard equipment for years in all aircraft. It is on airliners, but the info is not primary or always as easy to access, I've been told. It's insane that we determine stall speed with an airspeed indicator that's prone to errors.

I digress. Sorry.

Here's a great dissection by Langewiesche on AF447 with both technical and cultural facts that contributed:

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash