Comment by Serow225

I worked for a while in the Flight Test department at Cirrus Aircraft, the manufacturer who is probably best known for these systems (all planes they manufacture come with them). The picture on the right side of the Wikipedia page is of one of their first tests of the system. The test pilot who did that exact pictured test told me that it was a pretty exciting experience; they had done all the calculations and static load tests possible, but they couldn't be sure exactly what would happen until the 'pulled the handle' for the first time. The parachute straps could have pulled out of their mounting points, the parachute could have failed to fully inflate or gotten tangled on the empennage, etc. The test pilot had to wear his own parachute in case things went badly and he had to bail out of the plane (the test plane had a special system to blow the doors off to facility emergency egress). Happily it worked well, although the deployment is a little bumpy :) The chute system has a mechanically-activated rocket that busts out a panel over the chute tube which is intentionally weakly mounted, and then proceeds to pull the uninflated chute fully out through the open hole about 100 feet, and then there's a special 'slow-inflation' ring on the chute rigging to slow down the inflation of the chute so that it doesn't put excessive force on the chute mounting and/or hurt the passengers. To prevent serious injury to the passengers when the plane hits the ground (it's still moving at a good clip), the seatbelts have airbags and the base of the seat is a few inches of aluminum honeycomb to absorb energy. The landing gear and wings are also designed to fracture/crush in a way that reduces the amount of force transmitted to the passengers. Although it's not uncommon to walk away with broken limbs or some sort of back pain, it's better than the alternative :) Cirrus is currently working on a Very Light Jet, the 5-person + 2kid Vision SF50 (http://cirrusaircraft.com/vision/) which also has a parachute - but it's a lot bigger than the ones on their existing 4-person SR-20/22 prop planes! I can try to answer any questions as best as I can remember...