The little airplane that can
By Jennifer Harrington - June 1, 2008
Many business jet charter operators these days are opting to focus on a single aircraft type. The Eclipse 500 has received much publicity because high-profile businesses, such as Boca Raton, Fla.-based DayJet and Concord, Mass.-based Linear Air, have recently launched air-taxi services with that model. But an increasing number of operators are now focusing on another aircraft: the Cirrus SR22.
The SR22 is well known in aviation circles. It has been the world’s best-selling single-engine, piston airplane for five years, and in November the combined fleet of Cirrus SR20s and SR22s surpassed two million flight hours—the equivalent of two round trips to the sun. But the thought of using the SR22 for charter is still relatively new and only a handful of U.S. operators have embraced it. Those who have, however, stand by their decision.
Open Air, a Cirrus SR22 charter operator based in the Washington, D.C., and Houston areas, chose the SR22 because of its safety record, and because the lower average cost opens the door to a new group of charter customers. “You’re looking at $5,000 per hour for a regular charter flight,” said James Cooper, co-owner of Open Air. “An average trip [using the SR22] would be about $500 an hour. And that’s for the whole airplane, not per seat.” Stratus Alliance, a charter broker that contracts solely with SR22 operators, offers prices starting at $395 per airplane per hour. Such low figures are possible because the SR22, powered by an efficient reciprocating engine rather than a turbine engine, burns less fuel than traditional charter aircraft, according to founding partner Regis de Ramel. “A typical single-engine turbine airplane burns 50 or 60 gallons an hour,” he said. “The SR22 burns 15 to 17.” The savings make the SR22 an “easy, cost-effective way to get people to at least try charter,” he added.
Some operators, such as Lawrenceville, Ga.-based ImagineAir, offer flight-card discounts of up to 20 percent off the base price, which lowers the cost even more. The savings are attractive not only to new charter customers, but also to business jet owners, according to Haroon Qureshi, director of public relations and sales. “It’s not worth it for some owners to fire up their Challenger to fly from Atlanta to Hilton Head, [S.C.],” he said. “They can buy a round-trip ticket from us, and it would still cost less than fuel for their airplane.”
Businesses also use the SR22 on occasion. “A lot of these companies have their own aircraft,” Qureshi noted, “but if only two people are traveling, it might not be worth it for them to fly the company’s King Air.”
The SR22 is also “a fantastic tool for regional travel,” Qureshi said. “Most of our customers use the Cirrus to replace a three- to seven-hour drive,” he noted. Stratus Alliance founder de Ramel added that the SR22 “solves that last 200-mile problem. If a customer takes a commercial flight from California to Pennsylvania but needs to get to Albany, N.Y., how can he or she solve that problem?
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