Amanda Farnsworth, Nashville, TN
Senior VP of Hilliard Lyons and Chairman of Consumers Insurance Group
Amanda Farnsworth bought her first Cirrus just one week after completing her pilot’s license. For Amanda it was a life-long dream to fly. “I’ve wanted to do it my entire life, since I was a child, I wanted to fly. I just never had the opportunity or the time, and one day I just made the decision to do it.”
Her husband, however, wasn’t so sure. “My husband, who is so laid back, hated the idea of me flying, just hated it. Then he heard about this ‘plane with the parachute’”.
At that point, Amanda had been renting air time from a Cessna owner for her training. The two of them began researching Cirrus and soon took a discovery flight. “We started by reading about Cirrus, then the guy that I rented the Cessna from was interested too, so we contacted Cirrus and got them to come and give us a demonstration. We ended up becoming a partnership in that first Cirrus.”
Soon after, they became shared owners in their first Cirrus. “I probably would not be a pilot today if we hadn’t heard about the plane with the parachute.”
This meant Amanda could train for her IFR in her very own Cirrus. “I wanted to spend some time getting used to the plane and the speeds before starting my instrument training– it’s just light years ahead of what I had been flying.
“When I picked up my Cirrus there was a learning curve but a lot of that was going from a high wing to a low wing and adjusting to the speeds and instrumentation. If I’d trained in my Cirrus to begin with, I’d not have had that.”
Six years later, flying has become a huge part of Amanda’s life. “Flying a Cirrus has changed my life. We use my Cirrus for my business, my husband’s business (he owns a software company) and my daughter – who is a competitive golfer. Because of the Cirrus we can take her all around our region to tournaments.”
According to Amanda, the biggest changes her Cirrus have made directly to her business is that it gives her, “Time and energy". We’ve all saved a tremendous amount of time by flying which alone creates a lot of opportunities we wouldn’t otherwise have.
“We can get to Atlanta in an hour which would take four to five hours otherwise. You hop in that plane, fly down there in one hour for a meeting and you can be home for a glass of wine and dinner. It’s just good stuff.”
As for her husband and daughter, “They love it. My husband – who’s a talented business man in real life – is the baggage handler and concierge. On most flights he sits in the back and reads golf magazines. My daughter since age eight has become a pretty good co-pilot. She loves flying. She has her own log book and will sometimes talk back to the controller. If we’re in Class E Airspace she’ll make some of the radio calls. It’s actually very helpful when you’re flying into somewhere with a lot of traffic and she can reach over and put in your information – and it keeps her engaged.”
If you ask Amanda what she would do without her Cirrus, she’d tell you, “Without my Cirrus life would be much more complicated. The business time savings are incredible. How quickly I can be in Atlanta and also to my daughter’s golf tournaments. Many are weekend-long and it would be difficult for us to get out there without the plane.”
Today, Amanda is the sole owner of an SR22 GTS and a position holder for the Cirrus Vision SF50.