At Oshkosh, Garmin showed off their retrofit panel for the ancient Cirrus SR2x aircraft (-G1 and -G2, made from 1999 through 2008).
The G500TXi PFD and MFD screens are smallish (10 inches) and low resolution (1280×768; makes it tough to read an approach plate without pinching and zooming, not ideal workload additions when you’re trying to fly an airplane). The Garmin 750/650 nav/coms in the pedestal are getting long in the tooth at this point (introduced in 2011).
What’s interesting about the panel, then? The GFC 500 autopilot includes Electronic Stability and Protection that fights against unusual attitudes even when the autopilot is nominally off. The -G6 G1000-equipped SR2x airplanes include a GFC 700 autopilot that also has this important safety feature, so ESP is not a big advantage for the retrofit. The retrofit panel is all-touch all-the-time, which is great in a ground demonstration and not to great in turbulence. By combining the three backup steam gauges into a single Garmin GI 275, the autopilot control head can move to where those steam gauges used to be. With remote transponder and audio panels, the pedestal can be devoted to the 750/650 instead of two hard-to-read 650s.
Here’s where the retrofit truly shines:
The $1.2 million -G6 Cirrus doesn’t have this button. If the engine quits , it is the panicked pilot’s job to pitch for best glide airspeed, figure out which airports are within glide range, edit that airport list based on terrain and weather, pick the best airport, pick the best runway at that airport, fly down to the airport, get lined up on a reasonable final approach (vertically and laterally) for a runway, and then land. If the pilot makes a mistake at any point, it is time to pull the parachute, which will seriously injure the aircraft and may seriously injure the occupants (it’s designed to save your life, not your back).
Since 2022, however, the pilot of a boned-out $200,000 Cirrus that has been injected with $100,000 of Garmin (that was the pre-Biden price; maybe it is 130,000 Bidies now?) can have the calm, cool, and collected Garmin software do all of the above for him/her/zir/them except for the final two miles of gliding and the heroic flare. (See the video below; it is unclear what happens if there is a massive amount of extra altitude available. The pilot might have to do some descending 360-degree turns. On the other hand, maybe SmartGlide will turn into SmarterGlide in a later software release.)
Because this situation can’t last forever, my prediction is that the 2024 Cirrus SR22 and SR20 will be -G7 models and will offer at least Smart Glide and touch screen.
Related… an advertising video from Garmin.
Also related… what about Brand A? Avidyne brought their announced-in-2021 Vantage retrofit to EAA AirVenture. It still isn’t certified. The Avidyne autopilot lacks ESP. The Avidyne system lacks anything like SmartGlide.
Good info. Did they announce pricing? Is there a link so we can inquire about pricing / availability / qualified shops? Thank you.
As with much of the content of the New York Times, the above post is speculation. Cirrus is tight-lipped about future models and probably nobody outside the company will know until early January 2024. Pricing for aircraft seems to inflate with labor and health care costs because so much is done manually. Maybe take the $973k price of a new fully-equipped SR22 (follow the link from https://cirrusaircraft.com/aircraft/sr22/ ) and add 10% for improvements plus Bidenflation in labor/health care costs from Jan 2023-Jan 2024? I’ll guess $1.05 million!
Robert, good question… Not Withstanding philg’s typical political rant every time he opens his mouth. (about the NYTimes in this case…maybe philg, IMHO, you need to go into your backyard … find a quiet alone space and rub a few out to calm down?!?! 👋💦🍆), price will probably be a bit spendy based on historical data?
Diamond DA62 customers who ordered in 2021 were just told to expect delivery in 2024! Does Cirrus have the same 3 year backlog?
It’s more like 2 years, but yes. The only thing crazier than today’s prices for new aircraft is that they are UNDER the market-clearing price (i.e., the true inflation rate in aircraft price is much higher when you hold delivery time constant and ask “What would I have to pay to get a plane for delivery 3-4 months from order?”
(As part of my campaign to be the world’s most popular person, at Oshkosh I told the Cirrus sales guy that if Elon Musk took over the company he would fire all of them and not re-hire any sales people until the backlog fell to 3 months.)
Are they completely discarding MFD softkeys (the bezel buttons with context-sensitive functions) which the military and yachting community have successfully used for decades? Even gas pumps have them. I guess it makes the display smaller, but there are fewer things to touch.