Cirrus Airframe Parachute System
Aircraft safety technology
The Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS) is a whole-plane ballistic parachute recovery system designed specifically for Cirrus Aircraft's line of general aviation light aircraft including the SR20, SR22 and SF50. The design became the first of its kind to become certified with the FAA, achieving certification in October 1998, and as of 2022 was the only aircraft ballistic parachute used as standard equipment by an aviation company.
Developed as a collaboration between Cirrus and Ballistic Recovery Systems (BRS), it was adapted from the GARD (General Aviation Recovery Device) initially released for the Cessna 150. As in other BRS systems, a small solid-fuel rocket housed in the aft fuselage is used to pull the parachute out from its housing and deploy the canopy full within seconds. The goal of employing this system is the survival of the crew and passengers and not necessarily the prevention of damage to the airframe.
History
Design and development
Since the landing gear and firewall are a part of the structure designed to be crushed for energy absorption during impact after parachute deployment, Cirrus originally thought that the airframe would be damaged beyond repair on ground-impact, but the first aircraft to deploy (N1223S) landed in a field of mesquite trees and was not badly damaged. Cirrus bought the airframe back, repaired it, and used it as a demo plane.
Dating back to the first conception of the Cirrus SR20 in the early 1990s, the aircraft was intended to come equipped with CAPS. Because of this, Cirrus designed a special kind of "spin resistant" wing (or leading edge cuff) for the SR20, a concept originally developed at NASA Langley, which makes it more difficult for the plane to enter a spin. However, increasing the difficulty of entering a spin inherently makes it more difficult to recover from one if a spin does occur. The FAA accepted the parachute as a sufficient mode of spin recovery and complete spin testing was not required.
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