I would imagine Cirrus is ambitious and would like to see both their market share and their market overall grow. It’s entirely in their hands to do that. Killing the competition and taking over the entirety of a market selling 1,000 units per year - meh. It’s a tough market, but why not grow it to 2,000 or 5,000 units? Or even 100,000 or 1m?
It’ll get there, but it won’t look like it does today. It’ll be electric, autonomous and more accessible.
Anyway, I had too much coffee too late in the day, I’m revving and excited about the future, even if the present looks somewhat pandemically depressing.
Let me just +1 everything on Jorge’s list (especially fit & finish), and then add a couple of additional:
Make it easy to check the tire pressure on all three wheels. The current access doors are tiny and it’s a pain in the ass to rock the plane around until the stem lines up.
Improve the luggage tie-down arrangement and design it such that it is usable with one or both rear seats folded.
Improve the paint quality. These airplanes cost as much as a really nice house in most parts of the country. Vinyl stripes are absurd. I’m okay with decals for the N number since people do tend to change those.
Jorge:
Lot of good ideas, however, look at the state of the industry at this point in time. Low sales, low revenue and they are doing better than their competitors. The R&D for all the next generation comes from today’s revenue. Remember the Jets progression or lack thereof. They’re running a business and the reason they’re owned by the Chinese is they didn’t know how to manage it when they faced an economic downturn. I doubt they will forget that lesson.
Gil
Curious what years you all own re: paint quality. Maybe I got lucky or maybe they spend more time on the Xi planes, but my 2020 has stellar paint. As mentioned above it does have a lot of vinyl though. Having built several muscle cars and being a motor head in general, I consider myself to have a good eye for things like this. I haven’t seen another airplane with a better quality paint job. Leather quality and interior fit and finish is much better than my previous plane too. I believe they use the same leather manufacturer as Bentley in the new planes. It’s very nice. Maybe some of these problems have already been addressed in later generations, or are we all already talking about the G6?
I am glad that you have such a well finished ride.
I am something of a gear head, and have painted a number of vehicles, but not yet an airplane.
Having thoroughly cleaned and waxed my 2016 probably eight times, I now notice the numerous areas where the paint finishing is in need of improvement. Thinking seriously about calling @MehrdadAviana to correct this.
I have no complaints about the interior, and knew about the vinyl beforehand.
Much less than $100k. Most of the ones I’ve seen don’t read a pressure until the wheels have been rolling for a bit, though, which isn’t ideal for a pre-flight. I’d just be happy with a better access panel design.
2016 G5. The previous owner had to have the wings repainted due to quality issues. Now I have a crack in the paint just forward of the upper hinge on the pilot’s door, and although the plane is still under the “spinner to tail” warranty, that does not cover paint.
But mostly, the thing rubs me wrong is the use of the vinyl graphics. Compare with the sorts of schemes that Jamie’s or Ross’s shops are doing, where all the stripes (and placards like “no step”!) are painted and then clear coated. If these were budget planes, that’d be one thing, but they’re not.
Yeah. I guess a 2020 model year paint should still look OK in 2020!
The vinyl graphics is an aberration indeed. Even the SF50 has them so Cirrus added transparent tape at the edges (facing the wind) so they would stick. But they mostly don’t stick well. Here the ID plate (luckily kind of hidden below the yaw SAS “wings”) was installed before the graphics strips and, obviously, the graphics edges did not stick, I actually fixed this myself by adding transparent tape (in lieu of the yellow) but I will eventually ask for a redo (as part of the warranty):
I also have another “crack” in the paint on the egress window (luckily so it will be repainted separately):
I am lucky as I have seen no other issue but I have seen other always hangared 2-year old planes with more paint/finish defects than that.
But, seriously, one can go buy a Porsche for 10% of the price and I am sure said Porsche paint will remain defectless for a decade no matter what is thrown at it…
I was commenting on paint quality at delivery. I agree seeing how the paint holds up over the next few years is also very important. The pictures you show aren’t acceptable in my opinion, so I certainly understand from where you’re coming.
I don’t get the car comparison, Porsche or otherwise. A Porsche doesn’t fly, and it doesn’t have to pass certification. Furthermore, I’ve never ridden in a Porsche that has anywhere near the vibrations a 500+ cubic inch horizontally opposed engine produces. Vibration is hard on things, and many of these “things” have paint on them. I think the apples to oranges comparison isn’t fair to any aircraft. Myself and my friend locally both have Xi aircraft (his is a 2018 with 400 hours), and they both have pristine paint today. Perhaps they made some real changes with the G6 process or perhaps we’re both just really lucky. Anyone with a TTx care to weigh in on their paint quality? That seems to be a more reasonable comparison of aircraft quality in terms of paint.
Scott
All cars (<10,000#) sold in US since 2008 have had TPMS (tire pressure monitoring sensors) by federal law, Tread Act.
These sensors are small and have battery lives of a decade or more now.
Kinda insane they are not part of the Cirrus tubeless tire system.
For those wondering the valve and transducer are one unit in cars. They used to be pretty big but now smaller. Perhaps a balance issue on small plane wheels, but should be doable
I would guess that paint jobs are generally subpar on Cirrus airplanes because it is not part of the certification? I have complained a few years ago about this already, especially some carbon paint upgrades (that cost as much as a new car) and that degrade after a couple years.
Porsche is not certified by the FAA but by its customers, and I am sure they are no less demanding. In fact standards in some European countries are way higher than in the US (just look at food, or luxury products…).
I am going assume that the problem is that some people don’t yet know how to paint composite material correctly. Would be nice to know what Diamond aircraft owners think about their paint job.
I’d wager that some people do know how to paint it correctly. A few of them are on this board. Looking at the automotive world, let’s compare the paint on a $1M Cirrus to the paint on an all-carbon-fiber $300K McLaren and see which is better.
Paint actually IS part of certification on Cirrus airplanes, and is on the airworthiness limitations. This is because the paint is necessary to protect the fiberglass skin from sun damage.
However, it doesn’t have to look perfect to do its job in protecting the airplane from the sun.
Cirrus is in a production environment, painting 6-8 airplanes a WEEK with big bucks tied up in each aircraft, so they don’t have the benefit of time that our shop does. We paint 3-4 airplanes a month and each one is here for 6 weeks.
Some people do bring new aircraft to us for a custom paint job right away.
10 years? You must be kidding. 1 year and at my discretion after that. Any workmanship or material flaws will show up relatively quick. We almost never get any complaints, but I have fixed things years later I thought might be our fault.
