A LIGHT aircraft rescue system is proving so successful at saving lives that its inventors are now planning a version for small jet planes.
This month five more people owe their lives to rocket-assisted rescue parachutes made by Ballistic Recovery Systems (BRS) of St Paul, Minnesota. When a pilot loses control, or the engine cuts out, the BRS system deploys a parachute that brings the whole aircraft down safely.
When Andrew Kolk鈥檚 out-of-control Cirrus light aircraft came down on a rocky slope amid 3000-metre peaks in British Columbia, Canada, on 8 April, he and his three passengers walked away without a bruise. Two days later, Jeff Ippoliti got into trouble aboard his Cirrus in Florida, but he too lived to tell the tale. Both aircraft were saved by BRS chutes.
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The BRS system has a solid-fuel rocket 25 centimetres long which fires for just over 1 second to get a chute clear of the aircraft. To stop the chute from overloading the attachment points, it is restrained by a fabric slider ring that slithers gently down the harness so that it opens slowly.
The system is fitted on all single-engined planes built by Cirrus Aircraft of Duluth, Minnesota. A version is also an option for the four-seat Cessna 172. The main barrier to fitting the system to larger, faster aircraft has been the danger that the parachute will be torn off when it is deployed. But BRS is now working with NASA鈥檚 Langley Research Center in Virginia to develop a version suitable for six to eight-seat executive jets which can cruise at up to 650 kilometres per hour. It hopes firms like Cessna, VisionAire and Cirrus will adopt the technology for upcoming small jet designs.
The main technical challenge in moving up from a system that rescues light aircraft travelling at no more than 370 km/h to much faster jets is working out how best to handle the greater deceleration. 鈥淭his could cause the chute anchorage points to break loose,鈥� says BRS chief executive Mark Thomas. To avoid putting too much strain on jet airframes, a smaller 鈥渄rogue鈥� parachute will be deployed to slow the plane to below 330 km/h before the main rescue chute can be fired.
