Drank a little Cirrus cool aid this past week. Flew a leg in the SF-50 to include climbing to FL280, cruise at 300 kts, rapid descent demo(can go down and slow down), LPV, G/A, and full stop ILS on a wet runway with 8 knot tailwind. Vref was 85 knots. Required virtually no assistance from the demo pilot. I could easily fly the jet solo/PIC with my one hour introduction flight. When the time comes, will undergo type training to satisfy Cirrus/FAA but not necessary so safely operate the aircraft except for Garmin 3000 training. If you have operated the Garmin 750/650, you have 90% of the system knowledge required to operate the 3000. Was prepared to be underwhelmed, especially after reading this thread but, came away totally overwhelmed by how well Cirrus has designed the aircraft and integrated the Garmin 3000 into an airframe that will be a perfect step up for the average SR-22 pilot. The jet is easier to fly than the SR-22. Zips around at 300 KTS and 28,000 feet, won't overspeed, has seven seats so will have to be careful with weight and balance. The Garmin has an user friendly wt & balance built in. The jet has some range, speed and weight/balance limitations and a lot of us on Beechtalk would be wanting higher, faster, farther and maybe cheaper and probably older if we were to plunk down $2,000,000 and about $4,000 per month for total airframe/engine warranty and reserves. Cirrus is making it easy and safe to step up to the Jet A game. You could not want an easier airplane to fly. One example, the MFD can be split with Nexrad on one side and onboard radar display on the other side. Our flight was around moderate rain showers so was able to dodge the showers while directly comparing the excellent radar display and Nexrad side by side.

Fuel burn at FL280 @ 300ktas?

I still like the idea of a jet vs a turboprop. A turboprop is just a jet engine held back in reliabilty by a gear box and prop. I have flown both garrets and PT-6s. They are the only turbine engines I have had problems with. Garrets broke a beta tube and prop was going into reverse and PT-6 had a gear box problem and had to be shutdown. Fortunately both of those were multiengine aircraft. I have also had the unfortunate experience of relaying distress calls for a single engine PT-6 powered aircarft that ended up ditching off the coast of Russia. The economics and simplicity seem to support the single engine jet. Personally I think the SF-50 is fugly and a bit slow. Too bad Piper didnt put the Piper Jet into production. Good looking airplane and I think it would kill the cirrus in sales. A used Eclipse or Mustang seem to be better options to a new SF-50.

Easy and safe are two very different things.

We shall see if they are correlated, or anti correlated, in actual practice.

Historically, airplanes sold with the idea that are easy to fly have not had the best safety record. Over confidence is more dangerous than any characteristic of the plane itself.

Mike C.

Jets have gear boxes, too. Accessory drives, for example.

They also have a "prop" in the sense of the ducted fan.


A broken beta tube should feather the prop and that dumps prop hub pressure. How is it your situation was different?


Maybe that's the more important lesson here.


That's piston think.

The SEJ is crippled by being limited to turboprop altitudes. The twin is not.

The twin is far simpler to fly when an engine quits than the single. If both are running, there is no difference in pilot difficulty at all. So when is the single "simpler"?

Mike C.

Cirrus is knocking it out of the park on aircraft sales. This months ABS magazine has the sales of the aircraft manufactures. 317 Cirrus sold.

And what was the empty weight of the plane you flew?

What date, time, place did you fly? Registration?

Let's see if it really did reach 300 KTAS.

Mike C.

Piston deliveries by brand in 2016, top 5 in unit count:

Cirrus: 317
Textron: 262
Tecnam: 191
Diamond: 132
Piper: 93

Total pistons in 2016: 1019

Cirrus has about 31% unit market share. Not exactly the domination some believe.

In 2015, Cirrus was #2, behind Textron.

Mike C.

Piston deliveries by brand in 2016, top 5 in unit count:

Cirrus: 317
Textron: 262
Tecnam: 191
Diamond: 132
Piper: 93

Total pistons in 2016: 1019

Cirrus has about 31% unit market share. Not exactly the domination some believe.

In 2015, Cirrus was #2, behind Textron.

Mike C.

1019 total? That is next to nothing. Only about 21 new planes per state for the lower 48.
Cirrus will never recover the cost of development before the market dries up.

China

China

How many Mustangs has Cessna sold to new Textron customers in the same timeframe that SF50 positions have been available ?

Cessna has not sold enough Mustangs to recover the R&D. The numbers being discussed are so small they are almost insignificant.

ABS has the 2016 Piston Engine Total Production at 573 aircraft:

Bonanza - 25
Baron - 20
Cessna TTX/LC40 - 31
Diamond Single - 48
Diamond Twin - 96
Mooney - 7
Piper Single - 26
Piper Twin - 3
Cirrus - 317

Cirrus had 55% of the piston engine aircraft market in 2016. I'm also surprised how well Diamond is doing.