At risk of being that pilot at the dinner party who babbles on about airplanes while the guests gloss over from overload, it’s best to keep it surface level. But when someone asked if I had flown anything interesting recently of course I had to tell the story about the personal airplane that lands itself. After my five-minute spiel about how the new Cirrus SR models can put him back on the ground when his pilot can’t, he asked if the system will ever be in 747s. It sort of went off the rails from there.
What I should have explained, though, is something Cirrus’s SR-series product manager, Ivy McIver, reminded me of on the demo staged around White Plains in New York, and that’s the company’s focus on training every Cirrus pilot—not just ones who fork over $1 million or more for a new model. The Embark training program administered by Cirrus Training Centers started a few years ago and while I don’t have stats at hand, I’d bet that it saved at least one wreck. A guy buys an older used Cirrus as a step-up from the Cherokee, jumps in and starts flying after a quick checkout from a local instructor with no formal Cirrus training experience and fatally balls it up on a botched go-around. True story.
The complimentary Embark transition training, no matter which used SR20/22/22TN/22T you buy (it has to be airworthy, of course), is curriculumed around licensed pilots and generally satisfies insurance company requirements for the transition. Cirrus covers the tab for up to three days of training for the plane’s direct owner or designated pilot as long as the training is done within 60 days of taking delivery. Heavily focused on Cirrus-model transitions, it’s not intended for a flight review, IPC work or for ferrying the aircraft. The program isn’t for indirect owners, like flying clubs, and it doesn’t apply to Vision Jet transitions, where a type rating is required.
I asked McIver, who has worked on her share of Cirrus projects over the years and has flown more Cirrus models than anyone I know, what Safe Return means for GA flying moving forward and how many activations there might be. When she couldn’t answer, I realized it was a dumb question. Who knows? But with Safe Return standard in every model currently coming down the company’s Minnesota assembly line, according to the 2024 year-to-date General Aviation Manufacturer’s GA shipment report, Cirrus delivered 630 SR airplanes. At that rate and in two years with over 1000 Safe Return-equipped planes in service there will be some activations—and plenty that we won’t ever hear about when the pilot sits up and flies right after the Autoland (through the autopilot) regains control of the plane after he lost it. In our research of a wide variety of aircraft types, we’re consistently finding pilots who lose it while attempting to join the approach in the clag or ones who manage to save it on the approach only to lose it again on the missed. The new Cirrus has that very backstop.
We’ll look at Cirrus wrecks with a safety scan report in an upcoming issue of Aviation Consumer. —Larry Anglisano
