Narrative:

I recently learned about an event that occurred while I was instructing. He is a retired 121 captain and bought into a partnership of a SR22 based at ZZZ. It was our 3rd training session together and the purpose of the flight was an IFR procedure flight and getting him more familiar with the garmin perspective system and autopilot automation. We were given the departure from runway xxr and I had him load that in the FMS and our first enroute fix. We used the flight director in toga mode then at 500 feet engaged the autopilot in heading and IAS. In the perspective system there is a manual sequencing at 835 feet in the flight plan and the navigator goes into suspend.we were then given a left turn to 330 I believe and turned the heading bug to that heading and the plane turned left accordingly. Next we were given direct zzzzz intersection and I watched him follow my instruction which was to select direct to/enter/enter/nav button on the ap. At that point the planed turned right and I thought zzzzz intersection might be to the left. I believe somewhere between 15-20 seconds expired while we sorted that out and then ATC asked us if we were direct zzzzz intersection. I quickly looked at the HSI and saw it was in suspend mode. The buttons I watched him push were correct and the HSI should have been in GPS mode. We reprocessed the buttonology and the plane headed to zzzzz intersection. ATC was very nice about it and aside from being confused on why it happened I did not see that there was an issue. Later that evening I reviewed the 752 page garmin perspective manual and there was only once sentence in there about manual sequencing. With manual sequencing the navigator remains suspended in heading mode on a vector and only unsuspends when a fix is selected which we did. I tried flying the scenario in the simulator but never could get the plane to turn right as it did on the flight.the pilot informed me last week of a letter he received from the FAA and I presented the scenario to several other instructors and we used the simulator and could not recreate the flight path. After it was mentioned to me that this was one of the earlier perspective models and that there have been mechanical issues with the FMS keypad; I had a thought and tried it on the simulator. The discovery was; and confirmed by the aircraft owners; that the keypad has some wear and they have experienced difficulty with it accepting commands at times. The enter button of course is the one most used. So while I watched the pilot physically push the correct buttons; the 2nd enter push was not accepted. When the navigation button was pressed the plane turned to 050 which is odd in itself because the heading bug was on a 330 heading; but it turned back to the programed departure leg which was in suspend. Not back to runway xxr just 050 so that is why the radar will show that track. The takeaway is that they are having their plane serviced. On the pilot side we should have recognized that while zzzzz intersection had been selected and was showing on the mfd and flight plan the track and direct were different. It's on days like this I miss vors and needles.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: SR22 instructor pilot reported an issue with the Garmin Perspective system installed on Cirrus aircraft. He reported that owners of older keypads experienced difficulty with it accepting commands due to worn out buttons.

Narrative: I recently learned about an event that occurred while I was instructing. He is a retired 121 Captain and bought into a partnership of a SR22 based at ZZZ. It was our 3rd training session together and the purpose of the flight was an IFR procedure flight and getting him more familiar with the Garmin Perspective system and autopilot automation. We were given the departure from Runway XXR and I had him load that in the FMS and our first enroute fix. We used the flight director in TOGA mode then at 500 feet engaged the autopilot in HDG and IAS. In the Perspective system there is a Manual Sequencing at 835 feet in the Flight Plan and the Navigator goes into Suspend.We were then given a left turn to 330 I believe and turned the heading bug to that heading and the plane turned left accordingly. Next we were given direct ZZZZZ intersection and I watched him follow my instruction which was to select Direct To/Enter/Enter/Nav button on the AP. At that point the planed turned right and I thought ZZZZZ intersection might be to the left. I believe somewhere between 15-20 seconds expired while we sorted that out and then ATC asked us if we were direct ZZZZZ intersection. I quickly looked at the HSI and saw it was in Suspend mode. The buttons I watched him push were correct and the HSI should have been in GPS mode. We reprocessed the buttonology and the plane headed to ZZZZZ intersection. ATC was very nice about it and aside from being confused on why it happened I did not see that there was an issue. Later that evening I reviewed the 752 page Garmin Perspective manual and there was only once sentence in there about manual sequencing. With manual sequencing the navigator remains suspended in HDG mode on a vector and only unsuspends when a fix is selected which we did. I tried flying the scenario in the simulator but never could get the plane to turn right as it did on the flight.The pilot informed me last week of a letter he received from the FAA and I presented the scenario to several other instructors and we used the simulator and could not recreate the flight path. After it was mentioned to me that this was one of the earlier Perspective models and that there have been mechanical issues with the FMS keypad; I had a thought and tried it on the simulator. The discovery was; and confirmed by the aircraft owners; that the keypad has some wear and they have experienced difficulty with it accepting commands at times. The enter button of course is the one most used. So while I watched the pilot physically push the correct buttons; the 2nd Enter push was not accepted. When the NAV button was pressed the plane turned to 050 which is odd in itself because the heading bug was on a 330 heading; but it turned back to the programed departure leg which was in suspend. Not back to Runway XXR just 050 so that is why the radar will show that track. The takeaway is that they are having their plane serviced. On the pilot side we should have recognized that while ZZZZZ intersection had been selected and was showing on the MFD and Flight plan the track and direct were different. It's on days like this I miss VORs and needles.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.