Cirrus Partners Gather in Duluth

Oct. 1, 2014
Attending the 2014 Cirrus Aircraft Partner Symposium

I was invited to speak last week to a group of Cirrus Aircraft Authorized Service Center partners during the 2014 Cirrus Aircraft Partner Symposium. What a great event this was with partners from around the world listening to company updates by Cirrus Aircraft leadership, along with the ability to attend sessions from any of the three tracks; Service Track, Flight Training Track, or Supplier Track. With over 6,000 deliveries of the popular SR series of aircraft, the Cirrus story can be summarized as innovation, safety, and success.

I spoke on the topics of aviation maintenance workforce, some recent A&P school activity, and the NEXT-TECH for NEXTGEN initiative during the Service Track. The first question I asked of the 100 plus audience members was how many were currently hiring aircraft maintenance technicians. I expected half or more would raise their hands, but was amazed when most everyone in the room did. And this overwhelming response did not only come from just the U.S. attendees. Needless to say and as we all know, there are jobs out there.

Red Bull Air Racer and Cirrus Aircraft owner Mike Goulian provided an action-packed look at his career with the Red Bull Air Races to the entire group on Tuesday evening. All I can say is Wow! Earlier this year, Cirrus Aircraft became a sponsor of the Red Bull Air Race World Championship for the 2014 season and a Team Supporter of Team Goulian. 

Interacting with aviation and aircraft maintenance folks from around the world is always enjoyable, but the highlight for me was to hear Cirrus leadership update everyone on the Cirrus Vision SF50 jet. Flight testing for the jet’s certification is well underway with certification and entry into service targeted for 2015. With 550 orders on the books Cirrus states it has the ability to scale up production to 125 aircraft per year in 2017. For those of you who have seen the SF-50 I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a cool looking airplane. If you haven’t seen one yet, visit the Cirrus Aircraft website at http://cirrusaircraft.com/.