It’s the 13th of the month so let’s talk about some equipment that you’d have to be unlikely to need…
Cirrus airplanes need new rockets and parachutes every 10 years whether they’ve been living on the ramp in Texas or coddled in a climate-controlled hangar. The typical service center can’t do this work. In the southeast, the conventional choice has been to take the airplane to Atlanta where a couple of highly regarded shops have extensive experience with CAPS replacement (see DLK/Avias and Romanair, for example). This post is about a potentially more convenient/fun option: the Cirrus-owned factory service center in Orlando, Florida (Kissimmee, actually; KISM).
Our SR20-G2 is coming up on its 20th anniversary and, thus, without a new parachute/rocket it would have become illegal to fly starting in January 2025 (maybe all private planes will become illegal to fly in Jan 2025 if my Democrat friends were correct in predicting a dictatorship if Donald Trump were elected; a dictator wouldn’t want people flying around VFR, certainly, with no government tracking).
One advantage for the factory shop is that they may have the inside track on getting the rockets and ‘chutes. Others have reported planes being grounded for 6 months as these parts failed to arrive sooner than 9 months after being ordered. Assuming that Cirrus does eventually sort out its supply chain, a persistent advantage for the Orlando shop is that it is in Orlando. A Cirrus owner can load up his/her/zir/their family and arrive in Kissimmee on Monday, visit Disney, Universal, the cathedral, etc., and fly away on Friday (I arrived on Monday at noon and the plane was completed on Thursday).
Note that Cirrus offers a ferry pilot service if you want the plane picked up or dropped off, but they have very few pilots who are qualified to fly the old Avidyne planes.
The factory service center is mostly there for Vision Jet owners, I think, and it is tough to get an estimate and make a reservation (there is a “concierge” who never seems to be available), but once organized and confirmed everything is jet-smooth. Enterprise rental car is there on the field at Signature so it is easy to do a one-way car rental if you’re based elsewhere within Florida and don’t need a week of Orlando.
What about the price? It seems to be roughly the same as having the work done at an independent service center with CAPS authorization, i.e., about $20,000 (it was $12,000 ten years ago). Speaking of our inflation-free economy, when the Cirrus maintenance manager mentioned proudly that the company was spending $15 million on an under-construction facility at the airport, I responded “That sounds great, but $15 million might soon be the price of a Diet Coke.”
I enjoyed spending Christmas (on November 9, 2024) at Disney Springs as part of my Cirrus retrieval experience:
Kissimmee itself is famous for understatement and elegance:
(See also Kissimmee’s Monument of States)
In next 4 years Diet Coke will be almost free.
Now that gootube has made everyone Chuck Yeager & those have gone out of style, wonder if you can get exempted. Maybe it’s still useful if the engine dies over mountains.
“Dr” Phil:
How long are you going to be complaining about inflation now that it is back to the standard ~2%, as has been for some time? I guess you’ll probably stop on January 20th and declare it a Republican victory?
@Mike, when you spend $1 billion [1] against $388 million and still lose both the election and the popular vote (not to mention the senate and the house), is when it becomes clear that inflation and woke ideology are the issues. If you don’t, I feel sorry for you.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c3e80x71x0ko
Weird question: How much more would it cost to “desk pop” the chute over the service center (actually pull the lever in flight) than to have them replace it the “boring way”?
SM: the straps rip out a lot of composite and paint and the ground impact will destroy the landing gear. So maybe $150,000-200,000 in extra repair costs?
@philg so definitely not worth it! I guess the airplane is almost scrap at that point. It must come down fast.