In our December cover story about whole-airplane parachute recovery systems, the subject that interested me most was the future of “chutes.” These new safety devices are installed on nearly 2,000 Cirrus SR20 and SR22s, and at this writing, four have been deployed in anger. While reasonable people can argue about the details surrounding those four “pulls,” there’s nothing to discuss in terms of the outcome. Everyone in all four airplanes walked away unhurt. Only time will tell how things play out for BRS and Cirrus; will other airplane manufacturers install chutes? How often will Cirrus pilots pull the handle, and what will be the outcome? We’ll all have to wait and see.
While my story was predominantly about safety, the technical aspects of the parachute system are fascinating and were arguably deserving of an entire story. Thanks to BRS, we had a number of great photographs that we used in the story, but there were even more that we would have liked to have used but didn’t have the space, so here they are, along with a few words of explanation.
