Over 10 years ago, John Hutchings and his wife created a bucket list. The first item was to start their own business or two. The second item was for John to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a pilot.
As the president of Fall River Brewing and after earning his Private Pilot Certificate in 2021, John combined his bucket list items and now uses his Cirrus for his business. John uses his 西云SR22T to explore everything Personal Aviation™ has to offer, from making more business meetings possible to getting home to his family sooner.
Choosing a mission-ready aircraft
After earning his pilot certificate, John started looking at purchasing an aircraft. A friend showed John his Cirrus, and it “didn’t take much convincing after I flew in his plane.”
John decided on the SR22T, being particularly impressed by the turbo setup.
“The twin-turbo setup with Cirrus is amazing,” John said. “It works exceptionally well.”
Being instrument-rated, the additional situational awareness and capability provided by Garmin® 的 Perspective Touch+™ avionics in John’s airplane made it an even easier choice.
“ I’ve actually had airline pilots that have come, looked in my plane and were like, ‘You have nicer avionics, in my opinion, than what I have in my Airbus,’” John said. “And they’re blown away because the way the package is set up through simplicity; it just works extremely well.”
But an aircraft is more than just a business tool for John, and he wanted an airplane the entire family could feel safe in and enjoy. Above all, the biggest factor that led John to purchase a Cirrus was the peace of mind and safety the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System® (CAPS®) provided to him and his family. His wife, who was hesitant to fly at first, was convinced after taking a Cirrus demo flight and seeing the capabilities and safety redundancy provided by CAPS.
A business machine
John’s craft brewery necessitates regular visits with his distributors in California, Nevada, Idaho, and Montana. In California alone, his Cirrus is a business time machine. What could’ve required a whole new team, John was able to accomplish with one sales director and his SR22T.
“It was a big game changer — I called it a force multiplier. We only have one sales director and myself that do all the work, whereas normally people have a large team,” John said. “We’re able to do it all ourselves because we can fly to these meetings and we can make it a partial day trip to go, have a one-hour meeting with these guys — check in or spend a day working with them — and then be home really early versus a day of travel on each end.”
John uses his Cirrus for business about 90-95% of the time. When it’s time for a fun or family trip, the SR22T is ready for those missions too. Based in Redding, California, John even uses his Cirrus to connect to a major airline hub for trips that require commercial airline travel, saving, by his estimation, almost 2 hours every trip he has to make to a commercial airport.
Now enjoying everything that Personal Aviation has to offer, John’s learning that the 卷云生活 is more than just aircraft ownership.
“The network through Cirrus pilots and just Cirrus in general is probably something that I don’t know if there are other communities in aviation that are that strong,” he said.