After about 18 months and ~400 hours, I sold my 2012 SR22T G3 and upgraded to a 2013 SR22T G5. I had been using the G3 for most of my out and back business trips and when I had trips that needed more room / UL, such as our weeklong family trips, I would take my Seneca II.

After clocking 330 hours TT in 2017, I figured that I was spending almost 20% of my office time in the left seat of the airplane and needed to 'buy' more office time by getting a faster bird. I decided the best thing was to upgrade to an efficient t-prop and began shopping for Piper Jetprops & Meridians. I was about to list the G3 Cirrus and buy a Jetprop when my wife confessed that she did NOT want me to sell the Cirrus. It turns out that she gained a huge sense of safety and security when I began flying the Cirrus and she didn't want to 'go backwards'. Her feeling was that a SE turboprop was a step backwards from the Cirrus! Can you imagine? Showing her all the stats and reliability data on the PT6 did nothing to soothe her desire for me to keep the Cirrus.

Enter plan B...

As my wife was confessing her love for the Cirrus, my kids were also telling me that they much preferred it to the Seneca as well. So, the new plan became selling both the G3 and the Seneca and getting a G5 SR22T. This would allow us to use the Cirrus for our weeklong family trips and the other missions that I tended to use the Seneca for. Truth be told, I was getting tired of maintaining two airplanes and was ready to simplify. A hangarmate of mine has a relatively new Cessna TTx and we agreed to let each other use our own bird as a backup, so we will both have a $0 backup option should we need it. Perfect!

I sold my G3 rather quickly (much thanks to Jaime Steel, who I would recommend to everyone as a Cirrus broker) and looked at everything from 2013 G5’s to 2018 G6's and even test flew a brand spanking new G6. Let me just say WOW! The Perspective Plus avionics is a VERY nice upgrade with many, many improvements and the other significant improvement was the new door latch in 2016+ models. Although I loved the G6, I needed to fund new initiatives in the company more than I ‘needed’ a new G6.

That said, I’m REALLY happy with the upgrade. The UL bump already allowed me to do a mission I never could’ve come close to before in the G3. I flew part of our sales team (4 men total), their luggage and enough fuel & reserves for an hour flight AND was legal. Not many (4) seaters can pull off that mission. We will also be able to do our weeklong family trips in the G5 also, making the wife and the kids VERY happy.

My hats off Cirrus for a job well done on the G5’s as well as the new G6’s. When I'm ready for an upgrade on my G5, I'll look forward to some of those improvements.

Pictures or it didn't happen. I know the rule...

This is not the G5 I was expecting to see..........

Congrats on the new plane!

Congrats, Don! I'm not really a cirrus fan, but they should be commended for the continual improvements in the line, especially concerning useful load. Everyone else has gotten progressively worse on that front.

Nice. When I clicked on the thread I thought I would read that you upgraded to a Gulfstream.

That's next, of course...

The G3 can't fill the seats and fly one hour? Really?

Put two hours of fuel on a Comanche 260, and it will have over 1,000 lbs useful load left.

Surely 33/35 Bonanzas can do that, too?

A Cessna 182 will easily take 4 people and fly for an hour with reserves.

Maybe a 172 fits your description, unable to take 4 and fly an hour, but even that's not certain.

I'm surprised the G3 was that load limited.

Mike C.

Comanche’s are awesome. I have a fair amount of time in a 250. Loved that bird. The problem with most 4 seaters is lack of FIKI which is an absolute for my mission and where I live.

G3 Cirrus has roughly 900 lbs of UL when fully equipped and the G5 has roughly 1,100 lbs of UL when fully equipped. Some earlier G1 and G2 have equivalent UL if they are fairly stripped down.

For a newer model G5 to have FIKI TKS, factory A/C, turbo, built in O2 and all the other goodies an SR22 comes equipped with and still have 1100 lbs of UL makes it a very useful bird, especially for my missions.

I know that plane. I was out doing some pattern work at KMBY in Moberly MO on Apr 7th while on my way to meet Matt C for dinner. I landed for fuel and the ferry pilot came in right behind me. We chatted a bit about his experience as a regional sales director for Cirrus a few years ago. Nice guy. Nice guy. Nice plane. It is a traveling machine.

Tell us about the

My hangar neighbor has a G5. He flew the Cirrus jet and said he just about bought it. It handled like the Cirrus, but way more power and that climb rate.......
It also has a chute so that should keep your wife happy.

Vince

Yeah the fella who ferried it out to me was a super nice guy and took good care of her on the trip.

Tell us about the ??????

That's a small menu of choices.

For what you paid for a new G5, did you consider a Malibu/Mirage? Or a Meridian?

Pressurization is a HUGE game changer, turbine is a HUGE game changer, too.


4 x 170 lbs = 680 lbs, 100 lbs bags, leaves 120 lbs for gas, 20 gallons.

Yup, that's a problem.


Now you have 53 gallons.

Of course, your passengers might be more than 170 lbs per which would eat into the gallons.

Mike C.

Don

You caught me I was ready to read about the Gulfstream, I don’t know anything about the Cirrus at all but that’s a great looking machine. We are a manufacturing company and I admire people who do things right and Cirrus does an outstanding job.

Congrats that’s a beautiful machine.

Gary

Yeah the fella who ferried it out to me was a super nice guy and took good care of her on the trip.

Tell us about the ??????

Very few passengers are standard FAA 170 lbs passengers and mine are no exceptions. I was also carrying all of their luggage as well.

Mike,

This is what caught my eye.



All that and still a good UL sounds pretty good to me.

Also, I don't think it was a new G5, was it? I think he said he passed on the new G6?

Does anyone know if there are any aerodynamic changes with the GW increases?