The ding on Cirrus owners is they aren't well informed. I have no problem with someone choosing a Cirrus. We all have different purchase criteria.
But being a pilot is about being informed. What stuns me is a pilot that buys a six figure airplane without even knowing and flying all the types in the price range that fit the mission. Before I went M20, I'd flown an Arrow, a Bonanza and a Cirrus in addition to the Mooney. Read lots about the TTx and sat in one, and thought about Commanders and Socatas too. Already had Cessna time.
You don't have to answer if you don't want to, but if a pilot sees Cirrus marketing, and then just goes Cirrus because it's slick, without doing the homework, flying other types, many of us think that's like a flight without a weather briefing... that's kind of the dig. And I've met a couple of pilots that went from training to purchase without trying multiple types, and I don't get it. (I know that's not all of ya or even most of ya)
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To be fair Cirrus is a plane w/o my name on the title but the decision process for us was joint and had nothing to do with marketing.
We (Dad and I) flew several planes. We had a TB9 so the 20 was the next logical choice. We flew it and looked at 3 or 4 of them.
We flew Pipers, a commander, Dad even flew a skymaster (I missed that one). I sat in a Mooney and that was all I needed (not a dig, just reality). We put an excel spreadsheet together w/ a bunch of planes on it and went down the list of pros and cons.
A friend of a friend that knew we were looking to get into something a little less of a trainer said "lets go for a spin in my Cirrus"
Dad and I got in it and couldn't find a thing wrong with it. Ergonomic, Roomy, Useful load, 2 doors, no retracts, no smacking your head on the ceiling like in the TBs, and the list goes on.
We landed and talked through our list and I said "The only thing missing is a canopy that can be opened in flight but you can't have everything". That's not true but I feel like a lot of the marketing talk is thrown around almost as if to suggest that Cirrus somehow tricks people into buying their planes through fancy smoke and mirrors or because the wives will love the chutes.
Maybe that is true for some subset of the population. I know a number of pilots that fly these things and I only know one that repeatedly says "I just love knowing I have that extra out if things go south" I hear many times more chute and marketing talk from non Cirrus pilots than I do from those that fly them. It would be like me saying "Blue Knob" every time I meet a 182 pilot. He never thinks about that knob but I look at it like it is from a space ship because it's not a part of my flying.
Anyway, the marketing and chute thing could really be given a rest. I suspect most pilots buy them because you get a very simplified machine capable of flying like more complicated planes and there is no denying it is a luxurious experience which is important to a certain population.
So much trying to justify why they sell a lot of planes. They are, to many, a remarkable aircraft.
But hey, there are Nickelback fans too so who knows why people choose what they choose?
