Would I buy a Cirrus Jet for personal use? It would depend on the mission. If I had friends or relatives that I wanted to visit on a regular basis who were 600 miles away in a city not easily reached by airline from Boston, the Cirrus Jet would be great. If I had a vacation house that I wanted to go every couple of weekends, the Cirrus Jet would be nice. For casual trips around the Northeast, the SR20 is perhaps good enough. If the weather isn’t good enough to fly the SR20 I usually don’t want to go anyway (no point in being at the beach in the rain).

Would I have a partner? I’d probably have two partners in a plane as expensive as the Cirrus Jet, particularly given the cost of hangar and insurance (for some bizarre reason, the cost of insurance does not go up when you add partners at similar experience levels).

I know you have a few Mustangs and Phenoms on order and are therefore probably not in the market for a personal jet but; What did you think of the airplane from your personal perspective?

If you had no airplanes on order would you consider the Cirrus Jet for your own use?

Further, if you did would you seek out a partner or go it alone?

I’m impressed that you’ve proved to yourself that nobody will buy this airplane, but Cirrus somehow seems to have collected more than 400 deposits already. The significant risk now is whether they can certify it and deliver it at the promised price. The risk that nobody will buy it would require a further worldwide economic collapse.

Most of my doctor friends who own airplanes fly more than 150 hours per year (otherwise they wouldn’t own a plane). This is in turboprops that, before the Collapse of 2008, sold for $1-2 million. The faster and more comfortable the airplane, the more hours per year you’ll fly, according to a friend who has owned everything from a Baron to a Citation Jet.

Where do the flying doctors fly? They go to Florida or the Caribbean once or twice/year, to conferences once or twice/year (often as far away as California), to vacation houses or island hospitals regularly, to Europe every couple of years. Two trips to California = 40 hours, two to Florida = 20 hours, then you’ve got the 2-hour round-trips that they do every week or so for miscellaneous reasons and you’re up to 150 hours/year. These guys are not that old, have never worked as commercial pilots, and have 6000 hours in their log book. Had they chartered those 6000 hours instead of flown them, they’d have spent $15 million instead of perhaps $3.6 million to fly the Cirrus Jet for 6000 hours (including capital expense, fuel, engine overhauls, hangar, insurance, etc.).

Of the 800,000 active U.S. physicians, most will presumably find that a Lexus or BMW supplemented by the occasional JetBlue ticket meets their transportation needs. A Radiologist could earn $500,000 per year without ever leaving his or her house (just read scans that are sent via the Internet) and need not incur the expense of an automobile. However, a physician who serves hospitals in multiple states, a physician who speaks at conferences regularly, or a physician who simply enjoys aviation and travel can easily afford to purchase a Cirrus Jet and operate it.

I could probably prove to myself that no doctor would ever purchase an airplane because he or she could travel via Toyota Camry and Delta Airlines at a lower cost. Yet if I visit nearly any of America’s 12,000 general aviation airports, I will find at least one expensive airplane owned by a doctor. Either something is wrong with my proof or all of these doctors are stupid. (Given that I wasn’t smart enough to go to med school and become a Radiologist, I’m reluctant to cast the first stone.)

If I may ask, where are the numbers/projections that you’re relating to us coming from in regards to the projections of VLJ usage by a family?
To me it seems that these estimations are very high for families to use a private jet, especially if they do not use the plane for a company/business use.
At our local FBO I polled two pilots who fly private jets (capable of carrying 5-6 passengers) for local industry and neither of these guys felt that anyone other than the super rich would fly hundreds of hours per year in any of the new VLJ’s that are supposed to be available in the next gew years.

Can a plane with anemic climb hot-and-high performance at gross weight be safe? The original C172 shipped with a 145 horsepower engine (today’s 172 has 180 horsepower, admittedly for a higher gross weight). The Cirrus POH is accurate and they put most of the performance numbers into the Avidyne MFD. All that a Cirrus pilot needs to be safe is to read the POH.

The SR20 is not as idiot-proof as the 172 and is not as good a trainer. But it is safe when flown with some attention to airspeed and it is tough to find an airplane with comparable range and speed that is any safer statistically. A Bonanza has a higher accident rate than a 172 and nobody faults the Bonanza, maybe because it was priced at 2X the 172. The fact that the SR20 and 172 are similarly priced doesn’t mean that they should be compared. The 172 can’t do the missions that an SR20 can do. It doesn’t have the range, the speed, the passenger comfort in turbulence, etc. I will fly my SR20 in 30-knot gusts with a passenger on board. I would never have done that with the Diamond Star DA40 (similar wing loading to the C172 and similar excellent safety record) because the turbulence would have intolerable for them and horrific for me. I will fly the Cirrus in that kind of weather and so does everyone else, which is probably one reason more Cirruses get into trouble!

ok, i see your point on the fractional ownership. $1M is reasonable for a small partnership. (though we’ll see if doctors can afford them after obama is done with healthcare!)

regarding the SR20 being the worst except for all the others, you missed one very important feature: safety. i think cirrus is the sales leader solely because of a major fallacy in thinking among purchasers: the idea that the “control inputs” required to deploy the parachute (which you’ll be doing for the first time when you need it) are any easier to remember or execute in a terrifying situation than, say, the correct control inputs to break an incipient spin or extricate yourself from a terrain situation. the sr20’s poor initial safety record backs this up.

while i’m certainly no expert, my feeling from reading NTSB reports (i used to follow the cirrus quite closely back when i was considering buying one) is that they really didn’t design a very safe airplane and instead put all their faith in the parachute. for a “high performance” airplane it’s grossly underpowered (to wit, the angel fire crash in NM) and i’d be willing to bet the wing is very unforgiving in the stall and prone to spins (which seem to potential explain many of the early cirrus crashes). all small airplanes are uncomfortable and noisy, but at least a 172 doesn’t falsely lure you into thinking it’s safe. (which is why, ironically, it’s safer than an SR20.)