It was a rocky road getting there, a subject about which I could devote a long article, but the bottom line is, they succeed. Over the intervening years, the company went through struggles related to the economy and to bringing a jet to market. I was up in Duluth, Minnesota, the then-home of Cirrus Design, not yet Cirrus Aircraft, when the company launched the jet with a full-sized mockup. The costs, complexity, regulatory hurdles and engineering budgets surrounding an effort like this would tempt any financial analyst to abort takeoff before decision speed, that is, the speed at which you need to hit the brakes right now or commit to taking off. The Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet is one of the most talked about airplanes in GA history, and its on-again-off-again business history underscores the great risk and challenge of bringing a jet of any description to market. Itâs been a kind of sport to beat up on the SF50âs performance numbers, but that takes performance in a vacuum, removed from the very real issues of purchase price and direct operating costs, not to mention the very real and more difficult to quantify quality-of-life issues. The airplanes that are competitive in terms of price arenât as fast or canât go as far, or both, and the would-be competitors that can match or beat its performance cost a lot more. And at a price of $1.96 million, the air gets even more rarified. Part of this is because, well, the SF50, for which Cirrus earned type approval late last year and production approval, impressively, just a few months later, is the only single-engine jet. Thereâs no airplane thatâs a direct competitor, only ones that are possible alternatives. Itâs an apt metaphor for the remarkably successful Cirrus Jet, a single-engine, 300-knot 5-7-seat personal jet, that exists in a space all its own. Here in the 20s, not only were we by ourselvesâthe airliners thousands of feet above us and the pistons thousands belowâbut we were also apparently the only ones enjoying a smooth ride. Just like the light, we were, as they say, golden, with pilots in other planes at altitudes both below us and above squawking nonstop about the rough rides they were suffering. Up where we were, it was smooth, cruising along at Flight Level 270, Utahâs Painted Desert, swaths of reds, browns and golds panning behind us as we flew.
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