Cirrus Aircraft
aircraft manufacturer in the United States
The Cirrus Design Corporation, doing business as Cirrus Aircraft (formally Cirrus Design), is an aircraft design, manufacturing, maintenance and management company, as well as a provider of flight training services, that was founded in 1984 by Alan and Dale Klapmeier to produce the VK-30 homebuilt aircraft. The company is headquartered in Duluth, Minnesota, United States, with operational locations in six other states—Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Dakota, Tennessee (where its customer headquarters are based in Knoxville), and Texas—and sales locations in France and the Netherlands. It is majority-owned by a subsidiary of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC).
Cirrus markets several versions of its three certificated single-engine light aircraft models: the SR20 (certified in 1998), SR22 (certified in 2000), and SR22T (certified in 2010). As of July 2024, the company had delivered 10,000 SR-aircraft in 25 years of production, and has been the world's largest producer of piston-powered aircraft since 2013 and general aviation aircraft since 2022. As of 2024, it is the world's third-largest aviation manufacturer by unit-volume.
Sales of the SR-series grew rapidly during the 2000s, until the 2008 financial crisis when they slowed significantly and the company downsized. In the mid-to-late 2010s, Cirrus returned to profitability and funded U.S.-based expansion. In 2016, it certified and began deliveries of the Vision SF50 very light jet, the first civilian single-engine jet to enter the market; the aircraft is often referred to as a "personal jet".
The company produces all of its aircraft with composite materials and is known for pioneering new technologies in the light general aviation aircraft manufacturing industry, including glass cockpits and full-airframe ballistic parachutes.
“Cirrus Aircraft” enters the record as aircraft manufacturer in the United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cirrus, Aircraft and aircraft can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Cirrus Aircraft” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Cirrus, Aircraft and aircraft provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q966562. VIAF identifies the subject as 156300407. The Library of Congress control number is no2005107512. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1984, 1998, 2000 and 2010.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Cirrus Aircraft”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Cirrus Aircraft primary sources, Cirrus Aircraft archive and Cirrus research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Cirrus Aircraft”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Cirrus Aircraft” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.