Cirrus Aircraft

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 across the US including North Dakota, Tennessee (where its customer headquarters are based), Texas, Arizona, Florida and Michigan, and additional 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. It is currently the third-largest aviation manufacturer in the world overall.

Sales of the SR-series grew rapidly during the 2000s, until the 2008 financial crisis. Cirrus was planning to market a light-sport aircraft called the SR Sport, but suspended the project in 2009 due to financial challenges and a lack of market demand. This has since been cancelled. After a return to company growth and United States–based expansion in the 2010s, Cirrus certified and began deliveries of the Vision SF50 very light jet in 2016. Upon its delivery, the aircraft became the first civilian single-engined jet to enter the market, and 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.

In 2001, Cirrus sold a majority of the company to Bahrain-based Arcapita. Ten years later, the manufacturer was acquired by China Aviation Industry General Aircraft (CAIGA), which is a division of the Chinese state-owned AVIC. In 2024, it became a minority publicly-owned company as a component of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

In the early 1980s, while still in college, brothers Alan and Dale Klapmeier began making drawings and building foam models of the Cirrus VK-30. By 1984, they founded the Cirrus Design Company and along with spouses Jeff and Sally Viken, started developing the VK-30 as a kit aircraft project in the basement of the Klapmeier family's barn in rural Baraboo, Wisconsin. After a few years in the design phase, the brothers borrowed money to construct their own hangars on the Baraboo–Wisconsin Dells Airport, where they began flight testing. The VK-30 was introduced at the 1987 EAA Oshkosh Convention and first flew on 11 February 1988. Kit deliveries commenced shortly thereafter.

Cirrus began designing the ST-50 under contract to Israeli aircraft manufacturer IsrAviation in the early 1990s. The aircraft was configured like the Cirrus VK-30 but powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6-135 turboprop engine, in place of the piston engine used in the VK-30. The prototype was first flown on 7 December 1994 by Norman E. Howell. Earlier that year, the Klapmeier brothers moved company headquarters from southern Wisconsin to a much larger facility at the Duluth International Airport in Duluth, Minnesota, bringing 35 employees with them and hiring another 15 at once.

In August 1996, Cirrus announced plans to build a plant at the Grand Forks International Airport in Grand Forks, North Dakota.