I'll start the flame bait here by saying that anyone, repeat ANYONE who speaks ill of any safety equipment on any aircraft is an idiot. Period.
How about improper use of safety equipment?
The skydiver that allows a reserve parachute loose in a jump aircraft. The Cirrus pilot that uses the parachute instead of flying the airplane...or allows himself to make decisions based on having that magic little panic button available. The martin baker rider who gives his ride "back to the taxpayer" at the wrong time.
All safety devices, all with legitimate uses, all with potential abuse. And big consequences.
What's worse, an F-18 Hornet crashing into a residential area, as the pilot hopefully punches out at the last second, or a Cirrus floating to earth after a total engine failure.
Perhaps the F-18 needs a BRS ??? Might take three or four!
A F-18 driver who gets out is almost certainly doing so because every available option is no longer available. Nobody gets out of an aircraft riding a seat without having a VERY good reason. Strap a rocket to your office chair and take a ride through the roof and see how you like it.
The F-18 spends very little time over a residential area, and what little it does is minimized by speed and the type of operation. The Cirrus, however, spends a lot more of it's time over residential areas. The issue of residential areas is something you introduced, and really has no part in the discussion; I address it here because your comparison between the F-18 and the Cirrus is laughable at best, and utterly ridiculous. An extremely poor effort.
The Cirrus pilot who deploys his CAPS system has typically done so in panic mode, while flying in conditions in which he or she ought not. He or she does so knowing that statistically, a very high fatality rate has followed (by percentage). He or she does so generally after entering flight conditions outside his or her limits, and that of the aircraft...such as the recent deployment in Alabama in severe ice. The same may be said of poor preflights resulting in control surface failures, and other problems in flight.
The idea behind an ejection seat is to preserve the pilot/crew, not the aircraft. The aircraft is beyond salvage, and most are far too heavy, too hot, and too dangerous to be putting under parachute. When an ejection seat is used, generally the aircraft is no longer in the salvagable category. It's going in the recycle bin. The Cirrus, however, in all but two cases so far, has been in a flyable condition, and a landable condition. It may have been put in conditions where a safe landing wasn't practical, but that's a pilot error issue...the pilot should never have been there in the first place (eg, over the mountains in a thunderstorm at night). The idea behind the parachute on the cirrus is also to preserve the pilot and passengers, not the aircraft, and use of the CAPS system does significant damage to the aircraft...when it works. When it doesn't work, it still does significant damage, and the crash does more.
It always makes me smile to see low-time guys talk about what they'll do when they have to "dead stick" one in---as someone who has had to do that several times in civilian/military aircraft, it ain't fun, and it ain't as easy as saying you'll do it!
Uh...yes it is. It always makes me smile when pilots such as yourself say things such as you do. I would never let a student pilot solo, much less go for a practical test unless he or she were proficient and comfortable making power off landings, and in choosing and using off field landing sites. Perhaps your training was just very weak. But I doubt it.
Given a choice between landing a perfectly servicable light airplane such as the Cirrus, and attempting to land under canopy...I cant' imagine why anybody would be fool enough to deploy the parachute.
It's one thing to eject when you are in a 23,000 lb aircraft that has lost it's flight controls. Very understandable, and might I say, reasonable. It's another thing when experiencing a power loss in a light airplane like a Cirrus, to sacrifice a fully controllable and landable airframe to a non-rigid drift-with-the-wind parachute.
I've been jumping parachutes for 20 years now. Traditional round parachutes, paracommander hybrids, and square, ram-air canopies. Why anybody would elect to land in the Cirrus under canopy when they have any other choice, is beyond me. A fully controllable aircraft IS the safety device, and it's got far more options and capability than the parachute. Of course, Flight Safety International is fond of saying that the most important safety device in any aircraft is a well trained pilot, and they're not far wrong...we don't need to look to handles and ripcords as the saving grace for each event that's occured...just a pilot that isn't dumber than a box of hammers.
. Big difference between GA and Military flying.
