The Cirrus Design folks were in Chicago the other night on the first stop of a 22 city nationwide-tour promoting not only the G-3 version of their top selling airplane, but also a special new version of Garmin’s popular G-1000 avionics system called the Perspective as standard equipment on the aircraft.

What made last week’s event of particular note is that people were able to peer into the cockpit of the SR-22 while it sat inside the Garmin retail store located on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. The Cirrus folks trucked it down from Duluth, pulled off the wings and made it look to passersby like the airplane belonged on Michigan Avenue.

The irony of the event however, was that it took place on the same day General Motors announced massive layoffs in an attempt to cut the production cost of new cars. Not to be outdone, United Airlines also said it would cut another 1,000 workers including pilots and flight attendants to try and keep the airline from sliding any further toward the bring of extinction.

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