The fleet, and why the model decides the training

Not a flight school and not a Cirrus Training Center. This is an independent information page with no affiliation to Cirrus Aircraft. No instruction, checkrides, aircraft or enrolment are offered here. Nothing on this site is flight instruction, and nothing here substitutes for your aircraft's POH/AFM, current official documentation or an authorized instructor.

"A Cirrus" spans twenty-five years of aeroplanes and four distinct flight decks. Two aircraft that both say SR22 on the paperwork can have different systems, different panels and a different set of things that will catch you out — which is why transition training attaches to the aircraft in front of you rather than to the badge on it.

The piston singles

SR20 — the first of the line, certified in the late 1990s. The smallest engine of the three, and still a common flight-school aeroplane because it is the easiest of the family on fuel and on running costs.
SR22 — arrived a couple of years later with a larger wing and substantially more power, and became the aircraft the name is known for. It has been the best-selling piston single in the world for most of the time since.
SR22T — the turbocharged one. It buys real performance at altitude, and that is exactly why it also brings oxygen, weather and engine management into routine operation rather than leaving them as exceptions. The operating differences are genuine, and they belong in training on your aircraft, not on a web page.

The jet

The SF50 Vision Jet is a single-engine personal jet, and it is a different aeroplane rather than a larger SR22. It requires a type rating, which makes the training a formal course rather than a transition. It carries CAPS as the pistons do. If your plan is a step up from an SR22 to an SF50, most of the rest of this site does not apply directly — the type-rating syllabus is the starting point.

Two independent axes. The top row is which aeroplane; the bottom row is which panel is in front of you, and a generation number (G1 to G7) does not by itself tell you either. Two aircraft that are both "an SR22" can be twenty years and two flight decks apart, which is why transition training is specific to the aircraft rather than to the name.

A white Cirrus SR20 with green and blue trim parked on an airfield, seen from the side — An SR20 — the first of the line and still a common flight-school aeroplane, with the smallest engine of the three.Photo: Alan Wilson · CC BY-SA 2.0 · source

A white Cirrus SR22T with blue trim parked on an apron, seen from the side — An SR22T. Externally almost the same aeroplane as an SR22; what differs is the turbocharged engine and the altitudes it makes routine.Photo: Alan Wilson from Stilton, Peterborough, Cambs, UK · CC BY-SA 2.0 · source

A blue Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet taxiing, showing its V-tail and the single jet engine mounted on top of the rear fuselage — An SF50 Vision Jet. A V-tail and a single engine mounted above the fuselage: not a larger SR22 but a different aeroplane, and one that needs a type rating.Photo: ZLEA · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Generations, G1 to G7

Cirrus marks significant revisions as generations. Across the SR line these have brought airframe and cabin changes, systems such as known-icing protection on suitably equipped aircraft, entry and ergonomic revisions, and — the one a pilot feels most — successive flight decks. A generation number on its own does not tell you what is in the panel of a particular aircraft. Look at the aircraft.

Flight decks are the axis you will actually feel

Early aircraft have Avidyne Entegra; later ones have Cirrus Perspective, then Perspective+, then the current G7 Touch+ generation, all built on Garmin hardware. The differences are not cosmetic: autopilot behaviour and mode annunciation, how a flight plan is loaded and amended, and what the system does when part of it fails all change between them. That is the subject of the avionics page.

What this means in practice

When someone says they have "time in type", the useful questions are which airframe, which generation, and which panel. Insurers ask it, instructors ask it, and it is why a pilot with several hundred hours behind an Avidyne SR22 still has real work to do moving to a Perspective+ one. See transition training.

Specifications, equipment and availability change, and options vary from aircraft to aircraft. Cirrus Aircraft publishes the current line-up; for what a specific serial number actually has, the POH/AFM for that aircraft is the only authority.