Me too.. and it seems like they're well on their way. There are several videos of the plane flying,
some from as recent as last week with a demo flight .. honestly the new designs really hone in on what a contemporary buyer wants.. they want a comfortable cabin and simple "turnkey" ownership. That what you see in the Panthera, DA50, and the SR22. For what it's worth, a bells and whistles loaded G3 SR22 had quite a rather pathetic payload once it was fully gassed.. but that plane had no problem selling.
Depends on the year. Later in the G3 model the weight seemed to go up. Not sure if the G1000/Perspective avionics are heavier or if it is something else. An early G3, having the Avidyne displays, with TKS and AC often has around 1,050 pounds of useful load, which about the same as my G2
without AC. Cirrus also added bigger tanks in the G3, so if one fills the tanks then payload will go down. I think the bigger tanks were largely for the turbo models as people are often flying them at 75-80% and wanted more range.
You would think, but these joint partnerships seem fairly uncommon. Aircraft choice is so personal, pilots so rare, and people with the money even more rare, that it's hard to find two people in a reasonable close geographic area who want the same plane and have the same budget. And of course then comes scheduling.. two people can share a plane fine.. but 3 or 4 people.. that starts to really cut into weekends, holidays, scheduling, etc. You end up in flying club/flight school rental territory with scheduling but also have all the headaches of owning your own airplane. And.. if you want out.. then they have to either buy you out or you need to replace yourself, not easy
Definitely depends upon location. In a city there are more people, so odds of a match go up. In a small town, yeah, one is probably out of luck.
You are right though. Everyone seems to want "their vision of the plane", so even small differences seem to make a no-go. I wanted a G3 with AC, but an opening popped up on a G2 without AC. Knowing how hard it can be to set up a co-ownership I decided to buy into the G2. Probably could have found another buyer or two over time, but wanted to get back into a co-ownership and stop renting, plus the vast majority of my flying has been without AC, so it was just a "want".
I've been in groups before with 3 or 4 pilots and rarely do we have a scheduling conflict. In on SR22 there were 2 "real" conflicts in 4.5 years with 4 pilots; real being two people actually wanted to go somewhere at the same time. The other conflicts were someone wanting to just go out and fly for a little bit only to find on the schedule that someone else had it out on a trip. More, "ho-hum, some other day" and not a big deal. It's a traveling plane, and that's largely how we used it. Fewer owners should make it more available, no doubt. Between dollars, work and other activities we often found we can't fly as much as we'd like anyway. In none of the groups I've been in have I seen a big holiday demand, so I guess that can vary by the people in the group. Maybe others have that problem.
One of our owners wanted out this year. He wants to move up to a SETP, and the other two of us can't afford that. Even during the pandemic his share sold in two months, maybe three. We had one buyer sooner, but he
really wanted AC and preferred to have only two owners. He was also talking with another pilot and sold him on a SR22 G3 and they set-up a two person LLC. In a smaller city or a town selling a share could be a big challenge.
We're in the Atlanta metro area, so many people, making better odds to find a match.
). I do have less lateral headroom than in, for example, Ed's Comanche, but unless I'm "dancing" in the seat, it's wasted space. I don't hit my head in the Mooney, so it has enough room, but too much more would be... Well, too much. All it would do at that point is increase drag.
