While the Cirrus Aircraft exhibit at the recent EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, attracted the usual large crowd of existing Cirrus owners and those who are interested in buying an SR20, SR22, or Vision Jet, they would have to look closely to see the most interesting technology update to the piston-powered SR series, the addition of Safe Return Emergency Autoland. The sole visual indication of the Garmin Autoland system’s existence on the SR20 and SR22 G7+ is the button on the ceiling, which is easily accessible by passengers.
Autoland was first installed in single-engine turboprops such as the Piper M600, Daher TBM series, and Pilatus PC-12, and the single-engine Vision Jet. Later, it was offered as an upgrade for Beechcraft King Airs, and recently, Cirrus added Safe Return Emergency Autoland to the SR20 and SR22, the first application of the technology to a piston-engine airplane.
Incorporating Autoland in a piston-engine airplane is more complex because the necessary autothrottle system is generally found only in turboprops and jets. Autothrottles are a safety and performance improvement for turbine airplanes, making it easier to fly the airplane through rapid altitude and speed changes without having to focus on power settings. In the SR series, however, there was no autothrottle system to build on, so Cirrus and Garmin engineers had to start from scratch.
“Safe Return Emergency Autoland is a big deal coming into pistons,” said Todd Simmons, president, customer experience at Cirrus Aircraft. Not only was the autothrottle system required, but also automatic flap actuation, pitot heat, communications, transponder switching to the emergency code, navigation to a suitable airport, automatic smooth landing and braking, and finally, engine shutdown so the passengers can egress safely. One difference between Autoland in turbine airplanes and the SR series is that in the latter, the autothrottle is only for use with Autoland and not for normal flying.
There was a discussion about the benefits of autothrottle for Cirrus SR pilots, but that would have delayed deploying the safety benefits of Safe Return while waiting to get the expanded use certified. “The future holds a lot of promise about what those possibilities can be and when the time is right,” Simmons said.
As Big as CAPS
“Technology marches forward, and we’ll make the right decisions then, but we didn’t want to not bring this to market based on that decision. We see [Safe Return] as big as the first quarter century of what CAPS [the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System] has meant to this company,” he said. “[We’re] standing on the shoulders of CAPS, and the next quarter will be essentially defined by the net safety technology [that Cirrus has developed].”
CAPS and Autoland are complementary safety systems, in Cirrus’ view. Simmons summarized the basic idea as, “If the plane breaks, pull the chute; if the pilot breaks, push the button. I don’t mind being cliche, because it can be that simple, and the two systems are made to be harmonious with each other.” Safe Return deploys automatically if it detects the pilot as unresponsive.
There are even scenarios where it might make sense to use the CAPS after having pushed the Autoland button, such as Safe Return determining that it can’t get the airplane safely to a suitable airport. In this case, Safe Return would advise the occupants to deploy CAPS.
These safety tools include the autopilot’s level button, which automatically returns the airplane to straight and level flight, even if pushed when the autopilot is shut off. All three combine to give Cirrus pilots—and their passengers—more confidence about flying in what most non-aviation people consider a higher-risk “small” airplane.
“That’s how we look at it,” Simmons said. “It’s giving yourself permission to engage, permission to participate, permission to be a passenger.
“We consciously made those [design] decisions. In this case, I look up and I see a red handle, and behind it the big red button; red is for emergency, it’s why they’re that color, and how easy [it is] to access them. For us, the ethos and company mantra is around our fundamental focus on safety first and how that enables us to use that word, ‘confidence.’ To me, everyone, including the pilot, being confident is about being in the airplane and having a safe life.”
To that end, two years ago, Cirrus launched its private pilot program, a course of study designed to teach people how to fly in a Cirrus, starting from day one. More than 200 people have earned their private license as a result, and the program now has more than 3,000 enrollees.
Cirrus’ educational designers are using modern tools for the ground school, which is tightly integrated with the flying portion. “[This is] us developing learning materials that meet our customers where they are,” Simmons said. “We live in a portable device world. We live in an interactive world. We are fast approaching the virtual reality world.” All of these tools are employed, including virtual reality in the preflight walkaround course.
Most of the training programs are part of the Cirrus Approach system, which has 63 courses and more than 50,000 registrations. “If we’re bringing more people into aviation and showing them the power of personal aviation, we’re good with that,” he said.
Introduction to Turbine
What Cirrus is also doing with the Vision Jet is introducing a new group of pilots and owners to turbine operations in the flight levels in an airplane that is in many ways simpler to fly than a piston-powered SR. The Vision Jet also acquaints pilots and owners with the need to obtain a type rating. Even though the Vision Jet is arguably easier to fly compared to a high-performance single-engine turboprop, which doesn’t require a type rating in the U.S., Cirrus appreciates the benefits of the type rating process.
“The benefit there is that we’re seeing a safety record that’s reflective of the strength of what a type rating can be,” he said. “We embrace that the type rating and the program that we built is right for our customers. To date…the safety record, the training record, is very reflective of that. We’ve just passed 400,000 total fleet hours with over 650 [jets delivered].” Even if Cirrus decided to build a turboprop airplane, it would still insist on a robust training program despite the fact that a type rating wouldn’t be required. “We exactly would do that,” he said.
Cirrus did learn a lesson fairly early on that has contributed significantly to improving its training programs and lower accident rates. “We taught ourselves that in 2011 we had an airplane that was capable of being so much safer than it was,” Simmons explained. “That principally was around CAPS usage, and we realized that we had made the right airplane. We had not got the pilot right—if I can say it that way—and the training program right. That was the acceleration of the program called Cirrus Approach, and that was when our safety record improved.
“Today, we’re well below the general aviation industry average, both in total number of incidents and total number of fatal accidents. And until we get to zero, we’re not going to stop, but we are on that right trend. I dare say that our trend alone moves the industry, given how many Cirruses are in the air at any one time and how often they’re flown. The total fleet time of the SR fleet is over 18 million flight hours. And we’re approaching 11,000 [delivered].”
During 2024, Cirrus delivered 731 airplanes, including 101 Vision Jets and 630 SR series. “That’s no shabby number,” Simmons said.
There’s no doubt that Cirrus is working on new developments; after all, he pointed out, customers always want to go higher and faster and carry more. “When you look at the generational changes in the SR platform and the same in the Vision Jet, I think we’re telling folks how we think about bringing [in] technology. We won’t do it until it’s mission-ready and mission-capable.”
At a show like EAA AirVenture, Simmons explained, visitors get to see many different kinds of new ideas and technologies, and they may ask, “Why can’t I have this on my Cirrus?” “Hang on,” he said. “That’s got to fit the mission every time and meet all of our quality, reliability, and performance standards, and safety standards, [so it] continues to fit that mission. But when that’s right, I think you’ve seen Cirrus, over time, bring those technologies into the airframe, into the flight training, and into our customers’ lives.
“The road map today tells you how we think about what's next. My goodness, the G7+ and Safe Return Emergency Autoland is exactly that. It’s no accident we were first to bring it into a piston [airplane], and it’s no accident that we prioritize that kind of safety system going into a piston, to be first. I think that’s very telling about how we at Cirrus think about what’s next after that.
“[We have] a tagline, ‘Safety always in reach.’ When you make the airplane simpler to fly, you inherently make it safer. When my workload is reduced, and then when you bring in technology like this, you truly have put it within easy reach. And in that way, the tagline is more than just a line; it truly says the way we’re thinking about that. So I think that’s one where we’ve hit the nail on the head. I’ll close by saying that it truly can be the next 25 years of how safety gets defined at this company. In doing that, we bring many more folks into aviation that otherwise might not have chosen to participate, and we all win when that happens.”