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Cirrus Safety: Doing the Right Stuff

We have kept a close eye on the safety record of the Cirrus SR series since the beginning. Things weren’t so good at first—excellent training has paid off.

Rick Durden
Verified

Edited By:

Omar Filipovic

Cirrus safety - crashed airplane
Hardly a fair introductory photo, given that the accident rate for Cirrus aircraft has steadily declined. What is more important here is that the photo (NTSB) reflects the crashworthiness of the SR line. The cabin was not compromised during the impact sequence, despite forces strong enough to break off the empennage, and there was no post-crash fire.

Last year, (2024) there were more than 10,000 Cirrus (cirrusaircraft.com) SR-series airplanes in service worldwide. During that year, there was a grand total of six fatal accidents of Cirrus SR22s, also worldwide. Notably, there were no fatal Cirrus SR20 accidents reported anywhere in 2024.

When we tried to break that accident data down to a rate per 100,000 hours of operations—the typical yardstick for general aviation accidents—we ran into the issue that there is no definitive number for hours flown per year and Cirrus declined to give us the number it uses.

Rick Durden

Senior Editor Rick Durden has written for Aviation Consumer since 1994 and specializes in aviation law. Rick is an active CFII and holds an ATP with type ratings in the Douglas DC-3 and Cessna Citation. He is the author of The Thinking Pilot’s Flight Manual or, How to Survive Flying Little Airplanes and Have a Ball Doing It, Vols. 1 & 2.