CIRRUS DESIGN CORP SR22

The SR22 has been the best-selling piston aeroplane in the world for most of the last twenty years. It is a 310 hp composite single with fixed gear, side-stick controls, a large glass panel and a whole-airframe parachute, cruising at about 180 knots with 1,000 nautical miles of range. It replaced the Bonanza and the Mooney as the default aeroplane for an owner who flies himself on business, and it did so largely on the strength of the parachute and the cockpit. Cirrus numbers its generations and a buyer should know them, because the model name never changed. The first aircraft, 2001 to 2003, have conventional flight instruments with a large multi-function display; the Avidyne Entegra glass primary display arrived in February 2003. The G2 of 2004 is a cabin and systems revision on the same airframe. The G3 of 2007 brought a new wing with more fuel — 92 gallons against 81 — and taller gear, and from mid-2008 the Garmin-based Cirrus Perspective flight deck replaced Avidyne, so a 2007 or early-2008 aircraft is Avidyne and a late-2008 is Perspective. The G5 of 2013 raised gross weight to 3,600 lb and made five seats standard. The G6 of 2017 brought the Perspective+ flight deck, and the G7 of 2024 the Perspective Touch+ with larger touchscreens.

What a buyer should understand is the cost structure. The IO-550 burns 17 gallons an hour, the parachute needs repacking every ten years for several thousand dollars, the composite airframe requires specialist repair, and a 2007 aircraft's Avidyne Entegra avionics — or the first-generation Garmin Perspective on a late-2008 one — are now expensive or impossible to keep fully current. Payload is the other constraint: 92 gallons of fuel leaves about 600 lb of cabin, so four adults means less than full tanks. Fixed gear costs it perhaps ten knots against a retractable but removes a whole maintenance category. Insurance requires Cirrus-specific factory training, which underwriters take seriously and which genuinely reduces the accident rate in the type.