It's a boutique plane for people with a lot of money who want to skip the whole "learn to fly" process. Essentially it's a "pay to win".
The #1 selling certified single piston plane is a "boutique plane"?
Have a hard time reading steam gauges? Buy a Cirrus with a glass cockpit stream your favorite Netflix show while flying IMC. Why train to proficiency when the plane does all the work anyway right? And hell, if things fail, you can just bail and blame the weather, or other pilots. Maybe it's easier to pull the chute then to attempt to land anyway right? Who wants to taxi 5 minutes if you are right over your destination?
LOL
Most of my time in a SR22 is still from a 2002 model with a six pack. Training is needed as you still have to push the right buttons.
Or deal with it when you don't. Last year I was heading to Knoxville to pick up an Angel Flight patient. The weather over TYS was not as forecasted and I saw 100' overcast on my way there.
As I got there it was now 200' overcast. There was an airline holding as it was previously below their minimums. Another SR22 shot the ILS, but went missed. I did it, but didn't push the right buttons, so the AP was not not intercepting the ILS, so I disengaged it and flew in by hand. Yeah, ILS to 200' by hand, first one into TYS that morning. Yawn. I heard the airliner landing as I was getting out of the plane at the FBO.
It's also pretty funny to watch the sites selling aircraft and see Cirrus aircraft pop up there that are less than 10 years old with under 500 hours.
I thought, "no way!". Then I looked, and there are 3 like that on Controller right now.
WTF? *sigh* I don't get that either. I've seen plenty of planes rotting out on the tie-down areas. Others collecting dust in hangars.
The schools advertise Cirrus' all the time to fly in and I just don't see the point. Give me a cub or a slow-flying tail dragger anyday, keep your boutique plane.
If your goal is low-and-slow and backcountry strips, then the SR22 is definitely not the plane for that. I you want to travel, then a SR22 is one of the planes that does that well; there are certainly others. Bob's 182 is far better for backcountry flying than our SR22.
A week ago we just flew to see our youngest who is now working in Pueblo, CO. While they have commercial flights there, there are not many and all need connections to get to/from Atlanta. Same for Colorado Springs. Really, the best way going commercial is to fly to Denver and then drive 2 hours to Pueblo. Ick. We flew in our SR22; we own 1/3 of it, not all of it. That's 998.2 nm in a direct flight, which we didn't do flying IFR with rain/storms in the Midwest both ways, so it was over 1,000 nm each way. That's where a SR22 does well.
We like to travel this way. I also fly Angel Flight missions. The SR22 is a very good plane for both of those.