Cirrus — General Aviation
Explore the SR22's range on the map →The Cirrus SR22 can fly up to 1,050 nautical miles (1,945 km) as a ferry flight with no payload. With a full load of passengers and cargo, the range drops to approximately 840 nm (1,556 km). At its cruise speed of 183 kt, that's about 5h 44m of non-stop flying at ferry weight, or 4h 35m fully loaded.
The Cirrus SR22 redefined what a general aviation aircraft could be when it arrived in 2001 with a feature no FAA-certified production aircraft had offered before: a whole-aircraft ballistic parachute. The Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS) deploys a rocket-propelled parachute from the rear fuselage, lowering the entire aircraft to the ground in a controlled descent when the pilot determines controlled flight is no longer possible. As of 2024, CAPS has saved over 200 lives - a statistic that has profoundly influenced how the industry thinks about passive safety systems.
Beyond the parachute, the SR22 is a genuinely capable cross-country aircraft: 1,050 nautical miles of range, a 185-knot cruise speed (fast for a piston single), and Garmin Perspective+ avionics that include traffic avoidance, terrain warning, synthetic vision, and weather datalink. The combination makes it a serious instrument flying platform for owner-pilots making regular business trips - connecting city pairs of 400–800 miles efficiently without commercial airline schedules.
Cirrus has consistently led the piston aircraft market in sales for well over a decade, and the SR22 is the specific aircraft that most buyers choose. The turbocharged SR22T variant extends the ceiling and performance at altitude for western US operations where mountain airports demand more than a naturally aspirated engine can provide. The SR22 represents the high end of what personal flying has become: a sophisticated, capable aircraft that a non-professional pilot can reasonably operate in IMC (instrument meteorological conditions) and on long cross-country flights that would have been unreasonably risky in earlier generations of GA aircraft.
