Cirrus two-seater
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midwestpa24
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midwestpa24
I'm surprised they would be fielding a prototype new model without any PR at all. Most manufacturers start touting a new design as soon as they get done dreaming it up.
denverpilot
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Looks like a Cirrus. 
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Aztec Flyer
Wasn't Mooney trying to actually come up with a product for the domestic Chinese training market? And when that didn't look like it would work they tried to make it into a consumer version with retract gear and upgrades?
Is this a completely new, smaller airframe? Or is this the 2018 version of the Piper Cherokee PA-28-161 Cadet - strip out the back seat(s) and lighten up the 4 place airframe?
With the high cost of buying an airplane these days the loss of versatility by limiting to only 2 seats seems a tough go in the market. Maybe Cirrus is getting inquiries from very price sensitive fleet buyers such as the puppy mills and airlines that run training such as Lufthansa?
Is this a completely new, smaller airframe? Or is this the 2018 version of the Piper Cherokee PA-28-161 Cadet - strip out the back seat(s) and lighten up the 4 place airframe?
With the high cost of buying an airplane these days the loss of versatility by limiting to only 2 seats seems a tough go in the market. Maybe Cirrus is getting inquiries from very price sensitive fleet buyers such as the puppy mills and airlines that run training such as Lufthansa?
zaitcev
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Pete Zaitcev
I'm sure it shares a lot of heritage with SR-20. However, the wing is relocated further forward relatively to the cabin, probably because there's less airplane behind the front seats. The windows are a little different and the tail is very different. In particular, the horizontal stabilizer is moved to the tip of the tail. The nose gear is also different. I think that the whole thing is smaller, but it's hard to tell from the pictures.
steingar
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Maybe they smell blood in the water vis a vis the training market.
Pilawt
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That's more a recent trend, mostly by smaller, undercapitalized companies. In the heyday of general aviation, the established manufacturers rarely revealed anything about a new design until it was certified and ready for market. Ever hear of the Cessna 160, 187, or 327? Or the Piper PA-29 or PA-33?
Cessna didn't start teasing the Cardinal until just a couple of months before it went on the market.
Taking a page from the Vashon Ranger?
tspear
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Timothy
Actually I think that Cirrus looks like one of the early prototypes. A long while back, Cirrus used one of the early prototypes as a test platform for engines. I wonder if the program has been resurrected with an eye toward diesel with Diamond winning multiple recent training contracts because of the modern Jet-A burning engines.
Tim
Tim
Unit74
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We call that vaporware........
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Aztec Flyer
Bad example. The Ranger actually exists,flies, is the subject of articles and flight tests in aviation magazines. And it is the product of people that are well established in the experimental end of GA (Dynon) and moving aggressively into certificated avionics now.
Perhaps this outfit, which has been around for some years I understand, instead?
http://www.cobalt-aircraft.com/co50-valkyrie/#get-the-valkyrie
Anybody ever seen one of these fly? Take a test drive? Come across one on the ramp at S&F or OSH? Anything?
And what exactly is the $150,000 pre-order charge they have for "Type Certification package"?
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Aztec Flyer
I haven't noticed that a shortage of suitable airplanes is impairing the flight training market these days.
From my, albeit limited, vantage its a shortage of instructors. And a new trainer won't fix that.
denverpilot
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They probably aren’t marketing it because they know it will sell anyway and they’re going to be behind on production from day one.
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I don't know that's necessarily true. The sales of the SR-20 are quite poor compared to the 22s, although the upgraded engine this year may improve the situation. But then a two-seater might cannibalize SR-20 sales? And a two-seater trainer is destined to be a lower margin product that averages down the corporate ROCE.
Cirrus cannot possibly provide the level of attentive service to its owners that it does now if it moves away from high margin luxury airplanes.
denverpilot
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Probably for a fleet purchaser who won’t care about the Cirrus “lifestyle”. LOL.
zaitcev
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Did you mean the People's Liberation Army Air Force by that fleet purchaser?
denverpilot
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I was thinking more along the lines Cirrus would require their training curriculum and so forth - the CAPS thing again. They may have a potentially large liability if they don't.
denverpilot
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I mean, it’s all pure speculation but if they’re building trainers for the Chinese, they wouldn’t have any liability even if they did write a curriculum. They’d be doing it for the Chinese government, who isn’t going to sue them.
Well whatever. We shall see if it ever turns into an announced airplane. Oshkosh is coming soon.
Somedudeintn
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Interesting. I could see them trying to have more planes in the trainer market to keep people in the cirrus ecosystem. Like how a lot of people want to buy a Cessna because that’s what they trained in. I don’t see them making much money on a 2 seat plane, but who knows.
Flying_Nun
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According to GAMA, in 2017 Cirrus only delivered 46 SR20s compared to 300 -22s. My bet is they kill the -20 and replace it with EX18. That would round the fleet with a true trainer, step-up travelling piston, and final destination jet.
tspear
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Timothy
I think that mentality does not apply as much as it used too.
People have a lot less brand loyalty than they used too.
Tim
tspear
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I doubt it. SR20s are a good 20-30% less to operate on a per hour basis. The manufacturing costs are minimal since the part overlap with the SR22 is super high.
Tim
Pilawt
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Lufthansa's flight school here in Arizona just bought a bunch of new SR20s to replace their aging F33A Bonanzas for the airline trainees. For the German Air Force trainees they use the two-seat, 260 hp, fully-aerobatic Grob G120A. I doubt a low-powered two-seater would have met their needs in this hot-weather environment.
Grum.Man
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A 2 seat would make sense for the company to complete their strategy of people growing their needs through Cirrus. You have the SR20, SR22, Jet, now the 2 seat. If they do make one I am sure it will sell! Or maybe it's a 4 seat with a smaller engine. 2 Seat airplanes are a hard sell anymore. I do think there is a market for a non lsa new 2 seat airplane that is less trainer like and more personal cruiser. Something with 700 lb useful and 150+ knot cruise speed with a fixed gear. Basically a certified RV.
denverpilot
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“Growing their needs” LOL LOL LOL. That has to be the marketing wankiest quote of the week.
hindsight2020
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This is the Chinese masters fulfilling the real reason for Cirrus acquisition: Intellectual property siphoning and the chinese flight training market as the final destination for this product. This has goose egg to do with the moribund nothing burger US piston recreational market, imo.
zaitcev
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The Cirrus SLS was a (licensed) clone of Fk14, it doesn't look anything like EX18.
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Aztec Flyer
Why do you think a 2-seat newly certified plane will outsell a 4-place that shares the same airframe and wing as the rest of the Cirrus line (and is therefor cheaper to produce per hull)? Is the reason the SR-20 sells poorly maybe because the it's a dog of a performer with only 200 hp, and that Continental 6-cyl is more expensive to operate and maintain than the comparable 4-cyl Lycoming?
Everybody else has dropped their legacy 2-seaters. They must know something.
And Cirrus spent development money upgrading the engine in the SR-20 to the Lycoming IO-390 for 2018, to improve the performance, so would seem premature perhaps to write that off so quickly?
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+1
Cirrus has half the total piston single market now using the SR-20 as a sort of-trainer. How much more of that could they possibly gain with an expensive, low volume custom 2-seat trainer?
It defies imagination there is any money to be made producing a new 2-seater. Does everybody have to learn Mooney's lesson the hard way?
I think this thing is a research test bed. There's always things to be learned trying new configurations and components. And at some point the current Cirrus airframe is not going to look so modern after two decades plus, so they may be playing around with ideas for what the first "all-new" Cirrus piston since the original might look like.
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hindsight2020
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A turbo normalized SR-20 would have been a nice workaround to the poor climb performance, while taking advantage of higher altitudes to close the gap on the NA 22.
denverpilot
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They might have half of the current sales, but that’s nowhere near half of the current airworthy training fleet.
There’s not one in every two airplanes running around any training pattern anywhere that are SR20s.
And if fleet trainer sales are counted they don’t even have half of current sales. Piper wins those contracts at the big schools still, for the most part.
They may want a piece of that action. Who knows. Maybe one of ERAU, UND, etc... wants a leg up on their marketing wank and wants to say they’re moving to being “an all Cirrus fleet” and demanded a two-seater?
They’re bending students over so hard monetarily they can afford fleet purchases in bulk and can ask for crazy things from manufacturers.
3393RP
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And I wouldn't be surprised at all if the CAPS wasn't installed in the trainer for that market.
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Aztec Flyer
I wonder about the "Chinese flight training market". They seem to send large numbers of students to North America to train. Is this just spill over volume that their own domestic flight training can't accomodate? Or does China even have any flight training infrastructure to speak of?
hindsight2020
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These American buyouts are indicative to me that they're certainly working on it. We're the only suckers in the world who believe subletting our Sovereignty to other Countries is good for the rank and file because "globalization potato".....
denverpilot
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The devil is in the details. Cirrus would be dead and gone without her Chinese benefactors. That or someone wanted to cash out and not be in it for the long haul. You decide.
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Aztec Flyer
When the Chinese bought Cirrus in 2011 the controlling interest in the company had been held for about a decade by a Persian Gulf based Islamic Bank owned private equity company called Arcapita (I believe the Klapmeier brothers, who founded Cirrus, owned substantially the rest). I had some dealings with Arcapita in that time frame. And in those halcyon days I also got to watch the new Arcapita headquarters building going up on reclaimed land on the other side of the corniche from my Diplomatic Area office in Manama, Bahrain (pic below).
Like so many other high flying financial firms, Arcapita got slammed by the financial crisis and tried to sell Cirrus starting in early 2008. They did not conclude a deal until 2011, when China's state-owned CAIGA bought the entire company. Cirrus went through some difficult times in those years, and Nate is probably correct that it might have come close to being shuttered on occasion. Sales volumes collapsed at the outset of the financial crisis (and have never come back to anywhere near those levels since), the main shareholder was also under financial stress and reluctant to inject more capital, the remaining shareholder(s) likely did not have the means to compensate for that either. Bad combination.
