Hello, Knoxville
Cirrus isn’t just in Duluth anymore
When you say “Cirrus,” you think Duluth, Minnesota, right? Not anymore. Knoxville, Tennessee, is an emerging additional home for the groundbreaking company, which brothers Dale and Alan Klapmeier started in 1984. First based in Baraboo, Wisconsin, the company set its roots in Duluth, eventually making the city synonymous with the aircraft. It is the largest manufacturing employer in the city, where it continues to build its composite aircraft.
After barely weathering the economic downturn of the late 2000s, Cirrus was bought by a Chinese company. In the past 15 years, the company has seen a remarkable turnaround, becoming one of the most successful aviation companies in the world.
The composite Cirrus SR20, the Klapmeier brothers’ model introduced in 1999, featured the industry changing whole-plane parachute system (CAPS), setting Cirrus to become the manufacturer of the best-selling general aviation aircraft, eclipsing the venerable Cessna 172. Once past the tough economic years—and with the introduction of its Vision Jet—Cirrus has continued to boom. It is now a $894 million company with more than 2,000 employees.
The success and features of the Vision Jet—sleek and sexy and almost car-like—drive what the company calls the Cirrus life. It’s more than simply owning a personal jet; it’s experiencing all the pleasures available in life. To that end, Cirrus began searching for a suitable site for its Vision Center, a place where customers could come for the training, experience, and good life promised by owning a Cirrus. Duluth, while an outdoors mecca in the summer, has cold and not particularly suitable-for-flying weather nearly half the year.
Cirrus selected Knoxville through a site evaluation process that included more than 15 states and 30 airport locations. To help convince Cirrus, the state of Tennessee granted the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority $950,000 to develop the West Aviation Area at McGee Tyson Airport (TYS). Cirrus invested $15 million in Knoxville and brought 170 jobs to the area, according to Goldman Partners Realty. The number of Cirrus jobs in Knoxville is now around 250.
The Knoxville site, which broke ground in 2015, features the sales, delivery, training, maintenance, support, and personalization divisions of the company. The Vision Center opened in 2017, and the Flight Training Center opened in 2018.
The company also transferred some of its key personnel to Knoxville, including Travis Klumb, director of aircraft deliveries, who is responsible for highly staged customer deliveries that have now become synonymous with the brand (see “A Very Special Day,” April 2025 AOPA Pilot). With two CAE simulators for training, customers come to Knoxville for 10 days to obtain their Cirrus Vision Jet type rating. More than 1,300 type ratings have been awarded since the Tennessee site opened—signatures on the walls of the simulator rooms attest to the many successes—and Knoxville is the site of most Cirrus aircraft deliveries, some 600 annually.
The aircraft are still built in Duluth, but Knoxville is where the vision is realized. 
cirrusaircraft.com
