On the safety front, Cirrus Design must sometimes feel like it takes three steps forward and two back. In early October, when New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle's SR20 punched a hole in a Manhattan apartment building, the company got a thorough wash-and-rinse in the news cycle before being nudged off the front page by more sensational news. (A sex scandal and bad news from Iraq.) Having celebrities own the airplane you manufacture cuts both ways. It's terrific when they turn up on the cover of People waving merrily from the cockpit at Nantucket or East Hampton, not so fun when they're found at the bottom of a smoking crater. As if that weren't enough bad karma, two weeks later two more Cirrus accidents a day apart—both SR22s—claimed a total of six lives, plus two serious injuries. This turn of events so alarmed Cirrus CEO Alan Klapmeier that he wrote a letter to owners beseeching them to exercise common-sense judgment, especially with regard to weather-related decision-making.
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