Free Republic

The private jet industry is highly competitive, one in which companies will utilize any advantage to maintain existing clients while also luring in new ones. Which makes the fact that Cirrus — a Duluth, Minn.-based aviation company — has come out with the world's most affordable private jet something that will turn heads in the industry. After roughly a decade of development, Cirrus is beginning to deliver their first batch of SF50 Vision Jets to the more than 600 customers who were the first to purchase them (the inaugural plane arrived in Switzerland around mid-May of this year). The company...

Cirrus Industries Inc., parent company of Cirrus Aircraft, has been sold to China Aviation Industry General Aircraft Co. (CAIGA) of Zhuhai, China, but it appears the company will continue to build parts in Grand Forks, N.D., and assemble airplanes in Duluth, Minn. It has long been rumored that a Chinese company would acquire Cirrus and the final announcement was made Monday morning. CAIGA is a subsidiary of Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC), the state-owned aviation company of China that makes everything from military jets to airliners. In a news release, Cirrus CEO Brent Wouters says the deal will be a shot...

This is not a scientific comparison, but when I saw one scene I remembered another. This is the recent scene: yesterday afternoon, Naha airport, Okinawa, Japan. Line crew gassing up a Cirrus SR22: Details to notice below: crew identically dressed in company uniform; complete safety gear -- hardhats, reflective chest straps with procedural checklist clipped on, puffy protective cuff to shield the plane's wing from damage. It's hard to see in the picture, but even the boots are part of the uniform: black, with red laces, and company logos on the back. Impossible to see in the picture: the coordinated...

Cirrus Disappearance: Warming Might Thin Heat-trapping Clouds ScienceDaily (Nov. 5, 2007) — The widely accepted (albeit unproven) theory that manmade global warming will accelerate itself by creating more heat-trapping clouds is challenged this month in new research from The University of Alabama in Huntsville.Cirrus clouds. (Credit: NOAA Central Library, Photo by Albert E. Theberge Junior) Instead of creating more clouds, individual tropical warming cycles that served as proxies for global warming saw a decrease in the coverage of heat-trapping cirrus clouds, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in UAHuntsville's Earth System Science Center. That was not what he...

NY TV reporting the aircraft involved was N929CD>"Speculation" is that it was owned or in the process of being bought by NY Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Albert Kolk's small plane banked uncontrollably in darkness over the Monashee mountains, then began spiraling. "Seat belts!" he barked to his teenage grandson and two young friends. Then he reached for a red lever in the cockpit. Suddenly, an orange-and-white parachute as big as a house opened above the plane and gently landed his stricken aircraft in a rocky clearing. If the maker of the parachute that saved Kolk's life this past spring succeeds, one day commercial aircraft like regional commuter jets may have similar safety systems. First, though, there's the challenge of creating a parachute robust...