I don't know.

Piper PA38 Tomahawk has an 11,000hr life limit on the wings and a number of them have timed out and some have been fitted with younger wings to keep flying.

On the Cirrus, that isn't possible. The airframe itself times out and that's the end.

I recall this life limit stuff being a "somewhat recent" Part 23 requirement.

The mfr is required to have a life limit, therefore they make an educated guess. When the life limit is reached, should the mfr care to spend the money amd jump thru the hoops, they can extend it. If the mfr chooses not to, perfectly serviceable "parts" are swapped out for younger parts.

I believe (hope) this is being addressed in the Part 23 rewrite.

I have near zero actual knowledge of this; just passing interest. I hope someone who knows affirms or corrects what I've written.

I own one of the highest time SR22’s in the fleet, probably. It’s a 2007 G3 with 5900 hours. It was previously used on a 135. I would say the airframes are holding up pretty well.

Rental.

Regular commuter.

Heavy private user.

Charter.

Mike C.

To support your thoughts, the 135 operator that I purchased mine from went bankrupt.

I own a 2003 Columbia and I'm re-building a wrecked 2010 Corvalis 400: These planes are ROCK SOLID !

My Corvalis 400 had a |botched] landing incident that ripped off front nose wheel and the right main. The fuselage did'nt have a scratch ! The firewall did'nt budge one iota . I've looked at Cirrus wrecks and I can say they do NOT fair as well.

The 3000 hour inspection is not very invasive and changing out the wing bolts is no big deal either, except that there are a bunch of them. I wouldn't expect the 3K hour check to be over 25h labor when done at Annual.

Re the Tomahawk : Funny you mention that : I have a friend that runs a 1 man/plane Flight School and his Tomahawk just hit 11K hours last week. He had another wing lined-up and I was amazed at the utter simplicity of the design: Took 2 of us all of 1 day to swap out the wing with just 2 cherry pickers !

Quite a few SR22s are for rent.

https://www.google.com/search?q=sr22+rent


Quite a few SR22s for charter.

http://aircharterguide.com/AircraftSear ... wMore=true

You've subtly changed the question to talk about being the leading rental or charter aircraft which the SR22 isn't, but it does do that duty and that's where you will see 450 hours/year type service.

Mike C.

I'm not trying to start a "what is the best rental/charter" airplane question.

The question is "does any Cirrus fulfill the sort of workhorse fly a bunch of hours every day and make it's owner a profit so that even at 20 years old and clapped out and 8000 hours, somebody still hangs a new engine on it and flies another 2000 hours in 5 years then hangs another new engine on it because it can be reliably sold til the day it drops dead."

172 - yes. 206 - yes. Navajo - yes. (granted none have life limits, but people would still do the above if they did).

It's not that the Cirrus is fundamentally unsuited to any for-hire work. It's that it's not good enough at it to get flogged to 12,000 hours in less than a half century.

There will definitely be SRs that reach 12,000 hours before 50 years in service.

Mike C.

I sold my previous Cardinal to a traffic reporter in Salt Lake City. He was putting 6 hours a day, 5 days a week (3 hours for morning commute and 3 hours for the evening commute). That's about 1,500 a year. He did engine overhauls every 4,000 hours whether it needed it or not.

Vince

My opinion:

Just like the overwhelming majority of Bonanzas will never see 12,000 hours, so it will be with the Cirrus. There'll be a few exceptions (as there are in the Bonanza fleet), but overall that's no big deal when looking at the big picture of aviation.

I have the maintenance manual, could quote all the mandatory items from the limitations section. It doesn't look too bad actually. However, I don't know of a single example hitting 3000 hours and needing all this done. It was discussed at the last CAART event I was at, but even Van Bortels hasn't actually done this yet or seen an airplane with that many hours on it.

I sold my previous Cardinal to a traffic reporter in Salt Lake City. He was putting 6 hours a day, 5 days a week (3 hours for morning commute and 3 hours for the evening commute). That's about 1,500 a year. He did engine overhauls every 4,000 hours whether it needed it or not.

Vince

There will definitely be SRs that reach 12,000 hours before 50 years in service.

Mike C.

Alot of chafed wire short circuits occur when an improperly supported wire chafes against the airframe, when that occurs on an aluminum airplane sparks/smoke/fire occur, on a composite airframe that doesn't happen. Composite is not conductive.

But, there are many more wires in a composite airplane, because the airframe is not a ground, so every component has a ground wire returning the current to a ground buss.