Originally Posted by Insman

If you get a little "off" while in IMC, there is also a Blue "wings level" button you could hit prior to chute deployment. Does not sound like that would have helped here, very sad. Something about the Cirrus wing and stall speeds that does not make me comfortable along with the fact that they can't use speed brakes in their wings designs like they have on the Cessna 400.

Originally Posted by mjc123

There is an extended discussion about this on the Cirrus owners forum of which I am a member. The pilot reported an open door and was returning to the airport (a Cirrus door cannot be re-opened and latched in flight). It's really not a big deal, and should not be enough of a distraction to cause this accident. A witness on the ground reported smoke coming from the plane. Someone else on the Cirrus forum calculated the airspeed at impact to be about 90 knots based on a digital 28 fps interlaced video recording.

That's about all the facts, there's lots of speculation on the crash from mechanical failure to pilot incapacitation, the latter of which would possibly explain no attempt at using CAPS.

Originally Posted by Hernando

What's the forum address? If someone calculated the speed at 90kts from the video then it is safe to assume that he was way slower and lower if he was only moving at 90kts at point of impact. I guess we will have to see what the NTSB says.