"Take a look at this: A parachute helping this plane land after a rare midair collision," reported ABC news correspondent Kaylee Hartung, who called it a "remarkable sight." While one of the two airplanes involved in the Wednesday crash landed on its own, the other safely reached the ground with the aid of a parachute that comes standard for craft produced by Cirrus.
I pushed the button, and the aircraft took over and guided us safely to the ground, with my “heart attack” victim pal grinning slyly at the system the whole way down.A company with headquarters in Duluth, Minn., and with a large factory in Grand Forks is receiving national recognition in the news after a midair collision near Denver. Indeed, my demonstration flight above upstate New York felt distinctly futuristic. “This kind of introduces the idea of a passenger being able to deal with an emergency themselves.” “In future aircraft, there may not even be a pilot, and as we move toward that we know that passengers are going to want to know that they have some degree of control over these things,” Bergwall says. Looking even farther down the road, Safe Return could also help pave the way for the coming age of autonomous electric air taxis. Eventually, Bergwall says, systems like this could make aviation more economical, if they convince regulators that many midsized business jets can drop the requirement for having two pilots in the cockpit. Within a few months, Garmin will be able to offer it to other aircraft manufacturers that use Garmin avionics. But the system won’t be exclusive to Cirrus for long. The capability introduced by Safe Return-complemented by a rocket-deployed, whole-aircraft parachute in the Cirrus jet that can fire if the situation becomes even more dire-promise to make the Vision Jet one of the safest private aircraft in the world. This keeps the climate control active inside and allows for taxiing if the pilot or passengers are able to do so. Though the system can shut down the engine if necessary-important for aircraft with spinning propellers-Cirrus elected to keep its single engine running after the stop, since it is mounted on top of the aircraft and thus won’t hurt anyone approaching or exiting the plane.
It deploys the landing gear, adjusts the flaps to maintain lift as the airspeed slows, and uses precision GPS, along with radar information, to bring it down at the exact right spot. It then steers the airplane on a descent, alerting local traffic and air traffic control to the emergency via preprogrammed text and spoken-word messages it can voice itself over the radio. When someone hits the button, the system selects the airport that has the best combination of runway length and a clear approach relative to the weather conditions. The Safe Return system, which can also be used in turboprop aircraft, works with Garmin’s G3000 avionics suite, which features integrated control of all airplane systems, including the engine management, landing gear activation, control-surface movement, and the navigation, weather, and traffic-monitoring systems.
The technology is an upshot of the avionics Cirrus and Garmin developed for the Vision Jet, an “entry level” business jet introduced in 2016 that’s typically flown by the private owner rather than professional pilots.